Brie Larson

Brie Larson (birthname: Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers) is one of the most acclaimed female actors of her generation, having won an Oscar, a BAFTA award, an Emmy, the Golden Globe, an Independent Spirit award, a Locarno Leopard prize, a National Board of Review award, and a Screen Actors Guild award.

After a lengthy career as a child actor, in which she played many roles in TV and over ten features in small roles, Larson’s first significant film was Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg (2010), with Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Mark Duplass, Juno Temple, and Dave Franco, followed by a supporting role with Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Alison Pill, and Aubrey Plaza in Edgar Wright’s beloved cult movie, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010).

After a small role in writer-director Oren Moverman’s crime drama, Rampart (2011), Larson landed her biggest role yet in Columbia-MGM’s big-screen version of 21 Jump Street (2012), directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and co-starring Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Franco, Rob Riggle, and Ice Cube, and grossing a strong $202 million worldwide. After co-starring with Michael C. Hall, Chris Messina, Brad William Henke, Peter Fonda, and Lucy Liu in the Michael Knowles-directed The Trouble with Bliss (2012), Brie Larson played support in debuting actor-director-writer Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Don Jon (2013), earning a solid $41 million gross.

Larson’s breakthrough (and first lead) performance came in filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton’s acclaimed feature based on his same-titled short film, Short Term 12 (2013), with John Gallagher, Jr., Kaitlyn Denver, Rami Malek, Lakeith Stanfield, and Melora Walters, earning nearly five times costs. Larson was a supporting actor in the successful ($7-million-grossing) James Ponsoldt-directed The Spectacular Now (2013), with Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Bob Odenkirk, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Kyle Chandler, which premiered at the Sundance film festival.

After co-starring with Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Michael K. Williams, and Jessica Lange in director Rupert Wyatt’s remake of The Gambler (2014) and also in Joe Swanberg’s Digging for Fire (2015), Larson joined the ensemble of director-producer Judd Apatow’s and writer-star Amy Schumer’s comedy, Trainwreck (2015), with Bill Hader, Colin Quinn, John Cena, Vanessa Bayer, Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, Norman Lloyd, and LeBron James, grossing a strong $141 million globally.

Brie Larson won the Best Actress Oscar for her remarkable performance in Lenny Abramson’s feature adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel, Room (2015), with Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, Tom McCamus, and William H. Macy, premiering at the Telluride Film Festival, and grossing $36 million, or nearly three times costs. After a wild ensemble role in Ben Wheatley’s raucous black comedy, Free Fire (2016), Larson scored a major role in one of her first studio movies, Kong: Skull Island (2017), directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, and co-starring Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, and John C. Reilly, grossing a big $569 million global gross.

After reuniting with filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton for the intense family drama, The Glass Castle (2017), Larson had her debut as a feature filmmaker (as well as lead) in Unicorn Store (2017), released via streaming on Netflix. Brie Larson entered a new phase of her career by taking on the lead role of Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel in her first of several Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, Captain Marvel (2019), directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck and co-starring Samuel L. Jackson, Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou, Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan, Annette Bening, and Clark Gregg, and returning a huge $1.13 billion global gross.

Larson did back-to-back Captain Marvel turns with the huge MCU hit,  Avengers: Endgame (2019), directed by Anthony and Joe Russo and co-starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Karen Gillan, Bradley Cooper, Benedict Wong, and Josh Brolin, and leading to a massive $2.8 million global gross, making it one of the highest-grossing movies in history.

For her third movie with filmmaker Cretton, Larson joined the ensemble in a supporting role in the legal drama, Just Mercy (2019), starring Michael B. Jordan, and after a pair of cameos in Between Two Ferns: The Movie (2019) and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), Larson took on the role of Tess in the tenth entry in the Fast & Furious franchise, Fast X (2023), directed by Louis Leterrier, and starring Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, John Cena, Helen Mirren, Rita Moreno, Jason Statham, Jason Momoa, and Charlize Theron, resulting in a worldwide box-office return of $714 million. Larson then returned to the world of Captain Marvel with director/co-writer Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels (2023), with Teyonah Parris, Iman Vellani, Zawe Ashton, Park Seo-Joon, and Samuel L. Jackson.