We may not know much about the Captain Marvel movie yet but we do know this '90s-set superhero
adventure will star Oscar winner Brie Larson as the first female in the Marvel Universe
to lead her own standalone film.
Larson has been hard at work in Hollywood since she was just a kid, and offscreen, she's
known for being candidly outspoken and down to earth.
It turns out that her real-life story is just as fascinating as those of the characters
she portrays.
Larson was very young when she already knew
what she wanted to do with her life.
"I told my mom I knew what my Dharma was..
When I was 6 years old.
Your Dharma was... so… hippie parents."
Hippie or not, her parents took their daughter's ambitions seriously, and it's easy to understand
why: that year, she became the youngest student ever accepted at San Francisco's American
Conservatory Theater.
Larson's mother soon relocated the aspiring actress and her younger sister to Los Angeles,
where the trio squeezed into a tiny furnished studio apartment and Larson started auditioning.
Of her mother's support, Larson told Elle: "My mom always felt like she was a creative
person and her parents wouldn't allow her to have that kind of life.
So when I got interested in acting, she was like, 'Okay, let's make this happen.'"
And things did start to happen: At the age of seven, she filmed commercial parodies for
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
"Thanks, roadkill EZ Bake Oven!"
After that, Larson started to book small parts on TV shows including Popular and Touched
By an Angel.
Despite her early successes, Larson's career
wasn't a straight climb to the top.
She faced plenty of rejection while trying to land her breakout role.
It was emotionally taxing for the young star, not to mention the financial toll it took
on her.
She told the Guardian: "I'd hit the point where I'd go, 'OK, that's
it.
That's the last dollar.
I've got to quit or go to college or whatever.'
But that day or the next day, something would happen that would make it strangely apparent
I'm supposed to keep doing this a bit longer."
For Larson, the turnaround started when she was cast as Kate on United States of Tara,
and drew critical praise for her performance as the sardonic teenager.
By the time the show was canceled after three seasons, Larson's star was on the rise and
casting directors had started taking note.
"Wanna take a picture with me?"
Of all the movies she's made, Larson has said
there's only one she re-watches: the wacky action comedy Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
Unfortunately, her turn as ex-girlfriend Envy Adams went largely unnoticed by theatergoers
during its 2010 release.
Still, things were slowly picking up for Larson.
She had better luck in her supporting role as Jonah Hill's love interest in 21 Jump Street,
which was not only critically well-received, it was a hit at the box office as well, taking
in more than $200 million worldwide.
Larson garnered praise from critics as a standout who brought nuance and depth to a supporting
character that could have been totally unmemorable.
She may have only been 23 when she stepped
into her first leading role as troubled youth care worker Grace in the 2013 indie drama
Short Term 12, but Larson had been working hard for more than 15 years by the time she
got her first major big-screen break.
Larson shadowed real workers and did extensive research to capture Grace's emotions with
depth and accuracy.
She told New York magazine: "I was terrified.
And excited.
It was confusing: When we screened the film at the South by Southwest festival for the
first time, I had never had people look at me that way before."
The film won the Narrative Feature award at South by Southwest and Larson took home a
Gotham Award at the end of the year.
Larson isn't all about drama all the time.
2013 also saw a pair of rom-com supporting roles in The Spectacular Now and Don Jon.
And in 2015, she charmed audiences with her comedic chops in Amy Schumer's Trainwreck,
playing a fictionalized version of Schumer's sister Kim, and enduring a very unusual audition
process to land the part.
It all started when director Judd Apatow called Larson and invited her to lunch.
"My agent was like what, what happened?
What did you do, I was like I don't know, I just talked about myself for a while and
I ate a salad and I was like - well what did they want and I was like I DON'T KNOW!"
As she tells it, Larson came back for lunch every day, and soon Bill Hader showed up too.
Apatow eventually filled the actors in on his plans, using the get-togethers as part
of his unorthodox casting process.
After reading Emma Donoghue's book Room in
a single day, Larson knew she wanted to play the part of Ma, the kidnapped teen turned
long-term captive and mother.
After beating out several other actresses for the part, Larson dove into the role with
a massive amount of prep work.
She avoided the sun to achieve a pallid complexion, packed on 15 pounds of lean muscle and even
stayed home for a month, an experience she admitted was intensely draining both physically
and emotionally.
Larson's emotionally raw performance in Room was met with near-universal acclaim, and earned
her the biggest Hollywood accolade of them all: an Oscar.
The claustrophobic confines of Room were followed
with a complete 180 for Larson when she landed a main role in 2017's Kong: Skull Island.
Shot in Vietnam and Hawaii, it was full of big everything big budget, big A-list co-stars,
big special effects, and of course one very big gorilla.
While her first post-Oscar performance wasn't received with the glowing critical praise
as past roles, she was was credited with turning the franchise's traditionally fainting female
lead into a more modern, empowered counterpart to Tom Hiddleston's explorer.
More importantly, Kong: Skull Island proved Larson had the star power to carry a popcorn
flick: it was her most successful box office outing to date, taking in $566 million worldwide.
At Comic-Con 2016, the cast of the Marvel
Universe assembled on stage for a family photo, and then came a special announcement: Brie
Larson was introduced as Captain Marvel a role everyone at Marvel takes seriously.
"You're going to get the most powerful superhero that we've ever, that we've introduced and
I think one of the most unique and inspiring origin stories."
That's an awful lot of responsibility for one movie, but Larson seems eager to step
up to the challenge.
She told reporters: "I'm really proud of what it is that we're
making.
I think all the hype and anticipation will be worth it."
Looks like a perfect fit.