Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers (born October 1, 1989), known professionally as Brie Larson, is an American actress and filmmaker. Noted for her supporting work in comedies when a teenager, she has since expanded to leading roles in independent dramas and film franchises, receiving such accolades as an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019.
Born in Sacramento, California, Larson was homeschooled. At age six, she became the youngest student admitted to a training program at the American Conservatory Theater. She soon relocated to Los Angeles and began her acting career in 1998 with a comedy sketch in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. She appeared as a regular in the 2001 sitcom Raising Dad and briefly dabbled with a music career, releasing the album Finally Out of P.E. in 2005. Larson subsequently played supporting roles in the comedy films Hoot (2006), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), and 21 Jump Street (2012), and appeared as a sardonic teenager in the television series United States of Tara (2009–2011).
Larson's breakthrough came with a leading role in the acclaimed independent drama Short Term 12 (2013), and she continued to take on supporting parts in the romance The Spectacular Now (2013) and the comedy Trainwreck (2015). For playing a kidnapping victim in the drama Room (2015), Larson won the Academy Award for Best Actress. The 2017 adventure film Kong: Skull Island marked her first big-budget release, after which she starred as Carol Danvers in the 2019 Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame.
Larson has also co-written and co-directed two short films, including The Arm (2012), which received a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. She made her feature film directorial debut in 2017 with the independent comedy-drama Unicorn Store. A gender equality activist and an advocate for sexual assault survivors, Larson is vocal about social and political issues
Larson was born Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers on October 1, 1989, in Sacramento, California, to Heather and Sylvain Desaulniers.[1][2] Her parents were homeopathic chiropractors who ran a practice together, and they have another daughter, Milaine.[3][4] Her father is French Canadian and in her childhood, Larson spoke French as her first language.[5] She was mostly homeschooled, which she believed allowed her to explore innovative and abstract experiences.[3][6][7] Describing her early life, Larson has said that she was "straight-laced and square", and that she shared a close bond with her mother but was shy and suffered from social anxiety.[3][6][8] During the summer, she would write and direct her own home movies in which she cast her cousins and filmed in her garage.[9] At age six, she expressed interest in becoming an actress, later remarking that the "creative arts was just something that was always in me".[3][10] That same year, she auditioned for a training program at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where she became the youngest student admitted.[4][11]
Larson experienced trauma when her parents divorced when she was seven.[11] She had a dysfunctional relationship with her father; she has recalled, "As a kid I tried to understand him and understand the situation. But he didn't do himself any favors. I don't think he ever really wanted to be a parent."[11] Soon after their split, Heather relocated to Los Angeles with her two daughters to fulfill Larson's acting ambition. They had limited financial means and lived in a small apartment near Hollywood studio lots at Burbank.[11] Larson described her experience, "We had a crappy one-room apartment where the bed came out of the wall and we each had three articles of clothing."[3] Even so, Larson has recounted fond memories of that period and has credited her mother for doing the best she could for them.[12]
As her last name was difficult to pronounce, she adopted the stage name Larson from her Swedish great-grandmother as well as an American Girl doll named Kirsten Larson that she received as a child.[10][13][14] Her first job was performing a commercial parody for Barbie, named "Malibu Mudslide Barbie", in a 1998 episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.[2][6][15] She subsequently took on guest roles in several television series, including Touched by an Angel and Popular.[4] In 2000, she was cast in the Fox sitcom Schimmel, which was canceled before airing when its star, Robert Schimmel, was diagnosed with cancer
Larson's first major role came as Emily, the younger daughter of Bob Saget's character, in the WB sitcom Raising Dad, which aired for one season during the 2001–02 television schedule.[20] Hal Boedeker of Orlando Sentinel criticized the program and wrote that its cast members were "merrily joking through the show".[21] She was next hired for the ABC sitcom Hope & Faith, but she and some other cast members were replaced after an unaired pilot.[22] In 2003, she starred alongside Beverley Mitchell in the Disney Channel movie Right on Track, based on the junior drag race star sisters Erica and Courtney Enders, and played minor roles in the 2004 comedies Sleepover and 13 Going on 30.[23][24][25]
Larson developed an interest in music at age 11 when she learned to play the guitar. A music executive encouraged her to write her own songs, and she began self-recording and uploading tracks to her own website.[26][27] After failing to get cast as Wendy Darling in the 2003 film Peter Pan, Larson penned and recorded a song named "Invisible Girl", which received airplay on KIIS-FM.[12][15] She soon signed a recording deal with Tommy Mottola of Casablanca Records; she and Lindsay Lohan were the only artists signed by the label at that time.[12][28][29] In 2005, she released the album Finally Out of P.E., in which she also co-wrote songs with other songwriters, including Blair Daly, Pam Sheyne, Lindy Robbins, and Holly Brook.[28][30] She named it after a gym teacher she disliked and has said that the songs she wrote were mostly about failed job opportunities.[15][30] One of her singles, "She Said", was featured in the MTV series Total Request Live, was listed by Billboard in their weekly listings of the most-played videos in the channel, and peaked at number 31 on the Billboard Hot Single Sales.[31][32][33] Larson went on tour with Jesse McCartney for Teen People's "Rock in Shop" mall concerts, opened for him during his Beautiful Soul tour, and also performed in New York City at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Even so, the album was not a success, selling only 3,500 copies.[30][34][35] Larson later admitted to being disillusioned with her music career, saying, "I wanted to write all my own songs, and [the recording company] were afraid of that. I wanted to wear sneakers and play my guitar—they wanted heels and wind blown hair."[28]
In 2006, Larson was cast alongside Logan Lerman and Cody Linley in the comedy film Hoot, about young vigilantes trying to save a group of owls. It received poor reviews, but Ruthe Stein of San Francisco Chronicle was appreciative of Larson and Linley for bringing "a dash of Indiana Jones to their roles".[36][37] She had a small part, the following year, in the Amber Heard-starring drama Remember the Daze, and she launched an arts and literature magazine, named Bunnies and Traps, for which she wrote her own opinion columns and accepted submissions from other artists and writers.[27][38] Larson has said that she frequently considered giving up acting at that time, as she found it difficult to find much work, blaming it on filmmakers' inability to typecast her.[4] She was particularly discouraged when she lost out on key roles in the films Thirteen (2003) and Juno (2007).[39] To support herself, Larson worked as a club DJ.[40]
United States of Tara and film breakthrough (2009–2014)
In 2009, Larson began playing Kate Gregson, the sardonic teenage daughter of Toni Collette's character, coping with her mother's dissociative identity disorder, in the Showtime comedy-drama series United States of Tara. Portia Doubleday was initially cast in the role but was replaced with Larson after filming the pilot episode.[41] Reviewing the first season for The New York Times, Alessandra Stanley took note of how well Larson played a "real teenager" and Tim Goodman of San Francisco Chronicle credited her for finding nuance in her role.[42][43] Larson has said that her character's journey to find meaning in life mirrored that of her own, and she was upset when the show was canceled after three seasons in 2011.[44][45] Also in 2009, she starred alongside Rooney Mara in Tanner Hall, a coming-of-age film about four girls in boarding school. Despite disliking the film, Betsy Sharkey of Los Angeles Times commended Larson for providing "one of the film's funniest bits".[46] In her two other film releases that year, she played a scatterbrained cheerleader in House Broken and a popular high schooler in Just Peck.[47]
At the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2010, Larson appeared in a stage production of Thornton Wilder's play Our Town.[48] Directed by Nicholas Martin, it featured her in the role of Emily Webb, a precocious young girl. Reviewing the play for The Boston Globe, Louise Kennedy thought that the production had glossed over the play's darker themes and bemoaned the lack of tragic arc in Larson's character.[49] In film, she featured in Noah Baumbach's comedy-drama Greenberg and Edgar Wright's comedy Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.[50][51] A journalist for Slant Magazine opined that these films helped raise her profile, and Larson has said that the latter film, in which she played a rock star named Envy, marked a turning point in her career.[3][52] In it, Larson performed the song "Black Sheep" with the band Metric.[53] Although it did not do well commercially, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has since developed a cult following.[54][55] She next played the troubled daughter of a corrupt cop (played by Woody Harrelson) in the drama Rampart (2011), an emotionally intense part she found herself unable to detach from.[56] A confrontation scene between Harrelson and her proved upsetting for her; the director was surprised by how well it turned out and tweaked the script to further explore the father-daughter relationship.[57][58]
In 2012, Larson expanded into filmmaking by co-writing and co-directing the short film The Arm with Jessie Ennis and Sarah Ramos. The film, about societal expectations in the near future, won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival.[3][12][26] She featured as a seductive teenager in the critically panned drama The Trouble with Bliss,[59] after which she played Molly, a high school student, in 21 Jump Street, an adaptation of the 1980s police procedural television series, co-starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. Larson found her acting style to be more rigid than Hill's approach and was challenged by scenes that required her to improvise with him.[60] Dana Stevens of Slate labeled Larson "a find of major proportions", adding that "she's not only beautiful but funny, with a scratchy contralto voice, and unlike the usual female in a buddy movie, she comes across as a real person".[61] With worldwide earnings of over $200 million, 21 Jump Street proved to be Larson's most widely seen film to that point
