Brie Larson

Brie Larson (born October 1, 1989, Sacramento, California, U.S.) is an American actress whose compelling and understated performance as a young woman who has been kidnapped and held prisoner by a sexual predator in the independent film Room (2015) won her an Academy Award.

Larson was mostly homeschooled by her parents, who also encouraged her early theatrical ambitions. She made her public debut as a young child in a parody commercial on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. She also acted in guest roles on other TV shows, including an appearance in 1999 on Touched by an Angel, during her childhood, and she appeared as a daughter of the title character in the 2001–02 sitcom Raising Dad. In 2003 Larson was cast as a teen drag racer in the Disney Channel TV movie Right on Track, and in 2005 she recorded an album of teen pop music, Finally Out of P.E.

Larson was once again cast as the daughter of the title character in the critically praised 2009–11 TV series United States of Tara. During that time she also won notice in a small part in the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010). Larson played teenagers in the crime thriller Rampart (2011) and the comedy 21 Jump Street (2012) before undertaking both her first starring role and her first adult role, as a supervisor in a group home for troubled teens, in Short Term 12 (2013). She acted with Mark Wahlberg in The Gambler (2014) and with Amy Schumer in Trainwreck (2015) before her breakthrough in Room. In addition to an Oscar, Larson also won a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for her work in the film, which was based on a 2010 novel by Emma Donoghue.

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In 2017 the highly sought-after Larson starred in a number of films, notably the King Kong remake Kong: Skull Island and The Glass Castle, a drama about a dysfunctional family. That year she also made her directorial debut with Unicorn Store, in which she starred as a twentysomething obsessed with unicorns. She later played Carol Danvers, a U.S. Air Force pilot who becomes a superhero, in Captain Marvel (2019), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and The Marvels (2023). Larson’s other credits in 2019 included the drama Just Mercy, about a civil-rights attorney’s efforts to free an innocent man on death row.

In 2023 Larson starred in the acclaimed miniseries Lessons in Chemistry, an adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’s bestselling novel. The drama, set in the 1960s, follows a single mother who must contend with sexism as a scientist and later as a cooking show host.