By Nathaniel R
Last week the directors of Captain Marvel were announced, moving that imaginary Marvel Studios picture, starring Brie Larson, closer to reality. 2019 is still a long way off though we have plenty of Brie to tide us over until then. She's in movie theaters currently as part of Ben Wheatley's crime comedy ensemble picture Free Fire (reviewed). It's one of two features this spring whichhas featured Brie Larson as the token female amongst a group of adult men fighting for their lives (the other being Kong Skull Island). Which is, if you consider her particular skills as an actress, kind of a waste; to date she's consistently done her most transcendent work opposite other women or child actors.
Though it feels as if Brie Larson only recently exploded into fame having won the Best Actress Oscar for Room (2015), in reality she has been paying her dues for ages, winning her first TV gig at just 9 years of age (a comedy skit on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno) and her first movie gig by 10 (something called Special Delivery in which she played "Little Angel"). She's done a little of everything including an attempted pop career - which goes down really well in a meta sort of way via the satiric prism of her role in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and her role-playing within "United States of Tara" -- 'Princess Valhalla Hawkwind,' anyone?.
So let's look back on her movie history via POSTERIZED (returning for another season!). We've thrown in all her movies that we could find posters to (a couple others don't seem to have been released) and her three largest TV roles. How many of these 27 Brie Larson projects have you seen?
Chapter 1 - The Child Actress (1999-2002)
Her first movie arrived when she was 10 and the first of her 2 TV series regular gigs "Raising Dad" (which lasted just one season) began airing a few days after her 12th birthday.
Chapter 2 - Rising Teen Star (2003-2009)
She had her first headlining gig at 13 with the TV movie Right on Track and she was one of the "Six Chicks" of 13 Going on 30. But her breakthrough was surely as "Kate Gregson" on United States of Tara, in which she was reteamed with Keir Gilchrist (who she'd worked with on Just Peck) as brother and sister this time and held her own in complicated emotional / comic territory with both Viola Davis (as her mentor) and Toni Collette (as her mom)
Chapter 3 - Oh look, it's Princess Valhalla Halkwind - I enjoy her! (2010-2013)
By her early 20s the range was already quite laudable even if it was a bit hard to remember her name: Alison Brie? Brie Alison? Brie Larson? Alison Larson? (not that those two are anything alike but the names and the fame levels during this time frame threw me at least a bit)
Chapter 4 - OMG I freaking ❤️ Brie Larson. Give her great parts, plz Hollywood (2013-2014)
The breakthrough. Deadpan perfection in Don Jon and Oscar worthy film carrying duties in Short Term 12 in which she played a supervisor at a foster care facility. Her gift with child actors (perhaps from having been one herself?) would soon pay even greater dividends. And of course there was that large but nothing part that probably paid well as "the girlfriend" to a major male star, the thing that happens to even the best of actresses in their 20s and 30s and again in their 30s and 40s as "the wife". You gotta pay the bills!
Chapter 5 - Team Player / Sudden Oscar Winner. What's Next? (2015-2017)
The next step, having ascended to real fame via great acting in intimate dramas (Short Term 12 / Room) is to choose the right projects in order to make the Oscar look prescient rather than "too early" and to augment the bankability factor.
The future looks very bright.
She's got two prestige projects on the way, the already filmed Glass Castle and the just announced biopic Victoria Woodhull and in 2018 she joins the world's most mammoth cinematic franchise (The Marvel Cinematic Universe) playing Captain Marvel in Avengers: Infinity War. She might want to get a smidge pickier about projects now that the offers are abundant but so far, she's shown great instincts in climbing that Hollywood mountain.
WHERE ARE YOU IN REGARDS TO BRIE LARSON: How much of her work have you seen and do you consider yourself a fan?