“Truly the one”: Brie Larson names her biggest acting inspiration
Despite sharing a name with a delicious dairy product, Brie Larson is anything but cheesy.
She has achieved that rare unicorn of commercial and critical success at a young age, with the former seeing her a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as effectively its title character, Captain Marvel, and the latter, an Oscar winner, having sealed the deal with her performance in the intense kidnapping drama Room.
She’s done it all, and she’s not even 40, but it hasn’t always been easy for her, yet proving herself to be incredibly resilient in the face of opposition. She’s had plenty of help along the way, too, such as when the butthurt comic book fans complained online about a woman leading a Marvel movie, Samuel L Jackson stepped in to defend his co-star. While this is incredibly valiant and yet more proof that Jackson is a great guy, according to Larson herself, there’s one megastar who has inspired her even more.
Speaking to Brit+Co, the Scott Pilgrim vs the World star was asked to name some of her influences as an actor, and one name immediately came to mind that doesn’t always get the respect she deserves.
“Earlier in my career, like when I was trying to visualise what kind of career I wanted, it was Toni Colette,” she revealed, “She’s still a hero of mine, but she was truly the one that I was like, ‘I want to disappear into characters the way she does’.”
Colette is one who often gets forgotten about by those at the very top, but if you take the time to look at what she’s achieved, you’ll find one of the sneakily best filmographies of an actor still working today. The thing that’s really impressive about the Australian is her range, first making a splash with the comedy-drama Muriel’s Wedding, but she never let that define her. She’s done funny films, sad films, scary films, weird films, you name it, and perhaps that’s why she gets overlooked sometimes; she’s so good at just fitting in.
As she was born in the late 1980s, you’d think that Larson was too young to fully appreciate Colette when she was first coming through, but the former started very young.
She famously became the youngest student ever admitted to the American Conservatory Theatre at the age of just six, made her TV debut at eight, and her film debut at 11, so there is every chance that she has been a fan of Colette’s for her entire life.
While Colette will always be her cinematic true love, Larson admits that Hollywood is full of inspirational people if you take the time to look for them. “The fun part of my job is that there’s so many good people and so many things that are getting made,” she said, “It just feels like we’re constantly kind of manoeuvring.”
