Born in Sacramento, California in 1989, Brie Larson was homeschooled as a child, which made her a shy kid but also allowed her to think more creatively from a young age. She even wrote and directed her own films (in her garage with her cousins) while she was still a child and by the age of six she was already expressing interest in being an actress, auditioning for a training program at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco that same year and becoming the youngest student in that program.

Following the divorce of her parents which was a devastating blow at the time, Larson, her mom and her sister relocated to Los Angeles to help her pursue her dream of becoming an actor, one of Larson’s first screen roles being a commercial parody for “Malibu Mudslide Barbie” on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, on which Larson would appear until 1999.

Around that time Larson would also appear in various TV shows like a 1998 CBS drama called To Have and to Hold, Touched by an Angel, Popular (a teen comedy co-created by Ryan Murphy which was well-reviewed but lasted two seasons) and the ABC sitcom Then Came You, but her first main role came in the WB sitcom Raising Dad (2001-02) starring Larson as Emily Stewart, the daughter of a widower played by Bob Saget who is raising Emily along with his other daughter Sarah played by Kat Dennings.

Following this Larson would have guest appearances in more popular shows through the years, including Ghost Whisperer, The League, Kroll Show and Community, but her last main role in a TV series before her movie career took off was as Kate Gregson in Diablo Cody’s Showtime comedy United States of Tara (2009-11) starring Toni Collette as a suburban mom struggling with dissociative identity disorder, based on an idea by the show’s executive producer Steven Spielberg. The series marked my introduction to Brie Larson as an actor and the first time I recognized her acting skills. Her believable portrayal of a teenager on that show earned praise from many.

Brie Larson started appearing in films regularly in 2001, including TV movies like Disney Channel’s Right on Track co-starring Beverly Mitchell, but some of Larson’s best big screen films in this period of her career were 13 Going on 30 (2004) starring Jennifer Garner, Noah Baumbach’s dark but funny Greenberg (2010) starring Ben Stiller, and Edgar Wright’s video game-inspired Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) based on the graphic novel by Bryan Lee O’Malley, in which Larson plays Scott Pilgrim’s ex-girlfriend Envy Adams, a role Larson reprises in the 2023 animated Netflix series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off alongside Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and everyone else from the live-action film. Larson credits the breakout role as a door opener for her career.

Before then, the 2000s were a particularly tough decade for Larson to get roles (she almost quit acting after losing out on Juno) because a lot of filmmakers did not really know how to use her. Although critics did call her the highlight of negatively reviewed films like Hoot (2006) and Tanner Hall (2009), and she often earned praise for coming across in her films as a real woman and not the Hollywood version of a woman, which may have been why she baffled casting directors so much. She was not “conventional” enough. But after Scott Pilgrim, roles began opening up.

Larson starred in the true story-based Rampart (2011) playing the daughter of an LAPD officer (Woody Harrelson) who is wrapped up in controversy in the aftermath of the Rampart scandal of the late nineties, she played Jonah Hill’s love interest Molly Tracey in Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s hit buddy comedy 21 Jump Street (2012) based on the FOX TV series from the eighties, and she played the sister of sex-addicted Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Don Jon (2013). But the best reception of her career came when she got her first lead film role playing the supervisor of a group home for troubled teenagers named Grace Johnson in Destin Daniel Cretton’s 2013 indie drama Short Term 12, which was based on Cretton’s own experience working in a similar teen group home. That film was the Grand Jury winner at that year’s South by Southwest and it impressed critics with its realism and intimately told story, while Brie Larson herself got singled out as an emotionally gifted actor, earning accolades from several film festivals and film critics groups. Some people in the industry were even shocked that the film was completely ignored by major awards shows like the Oscars amidst Larson’s performance being praised as one of the best of the year.

Larson continued to have luck, next starring in the excellent drama The Spectacular Now (2013) with Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, Joe Swanberg’s largely improvised indie drama Digging for Fire (2015), Judd Apatow’s rom-com Trainwreck (2015) in which Larson played the sister of Amy Schumer (who also wrote the film and loosely based Brie Larson’s role on her actual sister), and Lenny Abrahamson’s highly acclaimed drama Room (2015) about a woman played by Larson who is being held captive, and her five-year-old son (Jacob Tremblay) who was born while she was in captivity. Just like Short Term 12, Room was well-received across many awards shows and festivals and Larson was again singled out as an outstanding actor (along with Tremblay), but this time the Academy was paying attention and they nominated the heartbreaking survival tale for Best Picture, as well as nominating Abrahamson for Best Director, Emma Donoghue for Best Adapted Screenplay and Brie Larson for Best Actress, and Larson would win, making her first Oscar nomination in history also her first Oscar win in history.

Next Larson starred in Ben Wheatley’s black comedy action flick Free Fire (2016), she played photojournalist Mason Weaver in Kong: Skull Island (2017), after directing a couple of short films she made her feature film directorial debut as well as starred in the earnest and whimsical Netflix film Unicorn Store (2017) which received mixed reviews, and she played U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and superhero warrior Carol Danvers in the Marvel film Captain Marvel (2019), which would go on to become the highest-grossing female-led superhero film in history. Larson would go on to reprise the role in Avengers: Endgame (2019) and The Marvels (2023).

Brie Larson is currently pulling off a nice balancing act with action blockbusters and quieter character dramas, sometimes playing Carol Danvers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and riding around with Vin Diesel in Fast X (2023) and sometimes coming back to Destin Daniel Cretton for more emotional roles in films like dysfunctional family drama The Glass Castle (2017) and Bryan Stevenson biodrama Just Mercy (2019) for which she played Equal Justice Initiative advocate Eva Ansley opposite Michael B. Jordan’s Stevenson. Larson even executive produces and stars in the Apple TV+ miniseries Lessons in Chemistry, a period drama developed by Lee Eisenberg starring Larson as a chemist-turned-cooking show host navigating the sexism of 1960s America.

For a long time, as I alluded to earlier, Brie Larson was hard to pin down for casting directors who are used to typecasting, because Larson is so multifaceted with her ability to play warm and steely equally well. When I watch her act, she can come off like the most mature person in whatever room she’s standing in, but she also seemingly has the ability to embrace her inner child when she needs to. She has a tendency to play characters with a lot of depth and who do a lot of thinking, often with an inner torment that Larson can convey expertly with just a look in her eyes. And despite her nervousness around improvising with comedians on the set of 21 Jump Street, Destin Daniel Cretton has praised her improvising skills. Further adding to her performance multitude. Even outside performances, how many Oscar winners do you know who started their own YouTube channel and are regularly active on social media? Yes, it was the pandemic in 2020 and her break from acting that prompted these endeavors, but that same year those endeavors led to her producing a virtual reality series called The Messy Truth VR Experience (2020) and that series won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Interactive Program. My point is that this woman is basically just winning at life.