Brie Larson became an overnight sensation when she won the Academy Award for Best Actress
in 2016 for her performance in the acclaimed drama Room.
Except, success and fame didn't come overnight for the future Captain Marvel at all, as Larson
has actually been toiling away in Hollywood for over 20 years.
Surprised?
Here's a look at the untold truth of Brie Larson.
A star is born
Born in the United States to French-Canadian parents, Larson spoke French fluently before
she began speaking English.
As a child, she spent her time watching old movies, telling The Los Angeles Times,
"Before I was old enough to have the money to travel, it was how I saw the world.
It's how I saw different people.
It was how I saw different countries.
It was how I saw different eras.
And I believed them."
Larson told The Guardian that at the age of 6, she announced to her mother,
"Mom, I know what my dharma is: I'm supposed to be an actor."
Not long after, her parents separated, and her mom moved the family to Los Angeles so
Larson could follow her dream.
It wasn't easy.
Larson told The Guardian,
"We had a crappy one-room apartment where the bed came out of the wall and we each had
three articles of clothing."
And she also changed her name, from Brianne Desaulniers to the stage name we all know
today, Brie Larson.
All that work paid off when she got her first big break - performing in a skit on The Tonight
Show with Jay Leno.
"Thanks, roadkill easy bake oven!"
Pop princess
Larson isn't just an award-winning actress and philanthropist - she was also a teen pop
star for about a minute in 2005.
At just 15 years old, the multi-hyphenate released her debut album, Finally Out of P.E.,
shot a music video for her single "She Said," and even went on tour with teen heartthrob
Jesse McCartney, but, according to Vulture, her record totally flopped.
Still, the Internet never forgets.
Larson told The Hollywood Reporter,
"I haven't done music in 10 years, but if you Google my name, my music video is one
of the first things that pops up.
It's this weird story that keeps coming back."
Gamer girl
Considering Larson's induction into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's not too surprising
to learn that she's an avid, lifelong lover of all things nerdy.
Way back in 2005, she told IGN,
"My 15th birthday was a Nintendo party.
It was awesome!
I had a bounce house and I had all my friends dress up as their favorite Nintendo character
and we played video games and had these giant blow-up hammers and whacked each other in
the bounce house."
And she's still embracing her inner geek girl.
A full decade later, in 2015, she revealed to Buzzfeed that playing games is a major
stress reliever.
"I know what I'm like when I'm at home, in my PJs, playing Zelda.
I know that person really well."
Struggling to get by
While Larson has now hit the Hollywood jackpot, it wasn't long ago that she was still struggling
to make ends meet.
After her hit Showtime series United States of Tara ended in 2011, Larson began working
in independent films, building up industry cred by draining her bank account.
She told The Guardian in 2013,
"I have no problem talking about how hard it's been, how broke I've been and how broke
I was not even that long ago.
I was freaking out around this time last year because I thought, 'This is it.
I've really screwed myself because I did three independent films.
I didn't do anything for money and now I don't have anything.'
I was eBaying stuff for Christmas presents."
However, her dedication to her craft and to the art of filmmaking is what got the movie
star through the difficult, frugal years.
"I won't do things for money.
I can't.
I don't have kids and I'm fine eating cereal if that's what it takes."
Quirky hobbies
Larson has struggled with social anxiety since childhood.
She told Buzzfeed,
"You could put me on a stage in front of 100 people and I could do a tap dance, but one-on-one
was really difficult for me.
And it took me most of my life to learn how to work with that anxiety, to embrace and
be comfortable with it."
Luckily, as she revealed to Vanity Fair, Larson has developed some unusual hobbies to help
her relieve stress and anxiety.
She told The Guardian that while working on the indie film Short Term 12, she spent much
of her free time designing new fonts.
"I made three or four different fonts during Short Term 12.
I have graph paper and gel pens and I would do the alphabet: just do 'a' over and over
again until I got it perfect and then go to 'b' and then 'c.'
I definitely look like a weirdo with scraps of paper everywhere and the alphabet over
and over again."
She also revealed in a Reddit Ask Me Anything that she spent years studying Mycology, which
is the scientific study of fungi.
So… that's cool.
A quiet engagement
There are drawbacks to being a Hollywood superstar, as fans and paparazzi want to know and be
part of every aspect of your life, something that Larson told Buzzfeed worries her.
"Because we put ourselves in a movie or on TV, then it must mean we want to be completely
open to the world.
Sometimes people will run up to you as if this is Disneyland and I’m a character.
I understand their point of view, but it’s difficult to explain how terrified it makes
me.
I’m so nervous."
That may explain why Larson has worked so hard to keep her engagement to musician Alex
Greenwald out of the spotlight.
Other than a couple of brief mentions, like during her Oscar acceptance speech, she's
done a great job of keeping her private life under wraps since they got engaged back in
2016.
"He's just my person, he's my best friend."
Not just an actress
In 2012, Larson stepped behind the camera for the first time, writing and directing
the short film The Arm, which won the jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
Five years later, she directed her first feature, Unicorn Store, in which she starred alongside
the likes of Joan Cusack, Bradley Whitford, and Samuel L. Jackson.
She told Vanity Fair,
"I felt like, What better time for me to direct than now, when I don't have a stigma attached
of this extra scrutiny, like, 'Oh, she's an actor - now she wants to be a director?'"
And that isn't the only role she's taken on outside of acting.
She is also an activist, spending much of her time and energy advocating on behalf of
sexual assault survivors.
In a 2017 Net-A-Porter conversation with Jane Fonda, Larson said,
"I'd put it all on the line and be an activist for the rest of my life because it doesn't
feel right to me to be quiet."
She explained to Vanity Fair that she viewed her filmmaking as an extension of her activism.
"There is a sense of joy and exhaustion that comes with every film, but the hope is that
all the exhaustion pays off and you end up getting to share it with the world.
That's the reason why I make movies.
You hope that it reverberates outward and that it changes people's opinions and hopefully
for the better."