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The Untold Truth Of Brie Larson

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Long before she was Marvel’s first female-led superhero, Brie Larson spent two decades grinding through bit parts, a failed pop album, and hundreds of rejected auditions.

The Academy Award she picked up in February 2016 for Room made it look like Brie Larson arrived out of nowhere. She didn’t. Nicki Swift’s “The Untold Truth Of Brie Larson” traces the actress born Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers from a six-year-old conservatory prodigy to an Oscar winner who still forages for mushrooms in her spare time.

• Larson became the youngest student ever admitted to the American Conservatory Theater at age six, and by nine she was doing sketches on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
• She detoured into music in 2005, releasing the teen pop-rock album Finally Out of P.E., on which she co-wrote songs and played guitar.
• Her Best Actress win for Room at the 2016 Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs came after Short Term 12 (2013) put her on critics’ radar — and she used her Oscar speech to publicly thank musician Alex Greenwald, whom she’d quietly gotten engaged to earlier that year.

A Conservatory Kid Who Grew Up on Late Night

Larson’s résumé started earlier than most people realize. Admitted to the American Conservatory Theater at six years old, she was doing television sketches on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno soon after and landed a regular role on the sitcom Raising Dad in 2001. It was steady work, but not the kind that builds a household name — and it set up a pattern that would define her next decade: visible enough to keep booking jobs, far from famous enough to stop worrying about rent.

The Pop Album Nobody Remembers

In 2005, Larson pivoted toward music, releasing Finally Out of P.E. as a teen pop-rock artist. She co-wrote tracks and played guitar on the record herself, a detail that gets lost now that she’s known for capes and courtroom dramas rather than choruses. It’s the kind of hard-left career turn that shows up more often than fans expect — a pattern explored across other performers who’re nothing like their public image.

Odd Jobs, Hundreds of Auditions, and a Mario Habit

The music career didn’t take off, and neither did acting right away. Larson auditioned for hundreds of roles and worked odd jobs just to stay afloat during the lean years. She leaned on genuinely offbeat hobbies to get through it — she’s a dedicated video gamer with a particular love of Super Mario Bros. and other Nintendo franchises, and she picked up mycology, the study and foraging of mushrooms, along with an interest in typography.

Short Term 12 to Room

The break came with Destin Daniel Cretton’s 2013 drama Short Term 12, where Larson’s performance as a group-home supervisor caught the attention of critics who’d never had a reason to notice her before. Two years later, she played Ma in Room, the role that won her the Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA for Best Actress in 2016.

She’d been auditioning for hundreds of parts and working odd jobs to make rent — then walked onstage in 2016 to accept the Oscar and thank the musician she’d secretly gotten engaged to months earlier.

Directing, Advocacy, and What’s Next

Larson didn’t stop at acting. She co-wrote and directed short films and made her feature directorial debut with Unicorn Store in 2017, putting her on both sides of the camera. Off-set, she’s been outspoken about gender equity, support for sexual assault survivors, and pushing for more diversity in film — positions she’s held onto publicly rather than softened for the industry around her.

That advocacy is about to get a much bigger stage. Larson is set to headline Marvel’s Captain Marvel, her first turn as a lead in a major superhero tentpole, putting the same actress who once played guitar on a self-financed pop album and hunted mushrooms between auditions at the center of the MCU’s marketing push heading into 2019.