My number-one website is brainpickings.org. It opens you up to different authors and gives insights into the literary world. Reading about the love letters novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote to his wife Vera blew my mind. Fascinating.
— Brie Larson
I think my mystery, or any person's mystery, is the thing that makes them most interesting. I try to be as conscious as possible of keeping that alive.
It takes a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of focus and dedication to do a film, and it's just not worth it if you're going to be miserable for even a day.
For me, 'Room' is an opportunity to relive an aspect of my childhood that I hadn't put a ton of thought into.
When it comes to Nintendo products, I gotta go with the new stuff.
I find that the projects I enjoy signing up to at the moment are with a director who's interested in the script - isn't completely sure what the movie is and isn't concerned about it. He's just interested in going on the journey and discovering it.
I'm just getting my sea legs. The first time you make them laugh, you're like, 'Oh my God - that just happened.' Then you're like, 'I made them laugh. I've earned this.'
Who would I be in 'Game of Thrones?' I love Brienne.
I watch clothes on other people, and it's like having a conversation before opening your mouth. For me, clothes come from the mind. They represent what's happening inside, and as long as they feel honestly like what I'm thinking about and going toward, I'm happy to bounce around and experience different things.
You could put me on a stage in front of 100 people, and I could do a tap dance, but one-on-one was really difficult for me. And it took me most of my life to learn how to work with that anxiety, to embrace and be comfortable with it.
A big producer offered me the part of the pretty girl that waits at home for the guy, and I couldn't do it. That's not a story I ever want to tell.
The hardest pill for me to swallow has been receiving recognition, getting dressed up, going to events. That's the part that has always terrified me. You can see dozens of photos where I have zero hair and makeup and I'm wearing my own jeans and T-shirt, because I was not that interested in that side of it.
Girls in this industry sabotage one another.
It can get really messy inside my head, and it's usually just because everybody can get really self-centered at some point. And so what usually keeps me from quitting is that my reasons for quitting are just lame. I wouldn't want anybody else to talk to myself the way that I talk to myself.
I won't do things for money. I can't. So I'll hold out and say, in my mind, 'There's a really cool diner down the street from my house. They make really good pancakes; I'd be happy doing that.'
I have no problem talking about how hard it's been, how broke I've been, and how broke I was not even that long ago.
I can't help but trip out about how similar my life is to 'Room.' It's me wanting to stay in my own little bubble and remain anonymous and invisible and at the same time needing to step up to this hand that I've been given.
Laughter is the best way to get over something or get closer to something. It's one of the things I respect most about Amy Schumer. She's found a way to get us closer to ourselves and see the ugly side of humanity, but not in a way that's pointing a finger or that's angry. She does it in a way that makes us see the absurdity and laugh at it.
I'm just interested in all of the different ways that a woman can be. We don't have enough, when it comes to American film, that shows all of the different complexities and ways that a woman is interesting and mysterious and dynamic and really complicated.
I've always felt like I've had the ability to choose which roles I was going to play. I don't think that the industry agreed with me, but I've always had a bit of a headstrong attitude of only doing the things that I really believe in and want to explore.
We lived in just a studio apartment with just a room and a bed that came out of the wall, and my mom couldn't afford even a Happy Meal. We ate Top Ramen. I had no toys, and I had, like, two shirts, a pair of jeans, and that was it. But I had my mom to myself, and I remember it being the coolest period of time. I loved it. I really loved it.
As much as I love acting, I just want to be a healthy person.
I love exploring the characters that I play, but the reason I sign on for something isn't the details of the story but the universal message.
My parents called me the WB frog. Because when I was onstage, I would do this whole song and dance, but if my parents had a family friend over, I would just go hide in the bedroom.
I hope to direct at some point, but I don't feel the pressure to rush it. I want to really know what it is that I'm doing.
As I have had to meet different challenges, I realize I am coming into myself, and whatever I'm wearing is another chance for me to explore a new version of myself.
The thing I was always most protective of was my mystery. I worried that if I gave too much of myself, then I would limit the characters I could fall into.
The entire process of making a movie is sort of blind trust because, otherwise, all of it just doesn't make any sense: the fact that we can create any sense of reality or emotion given the arbitrariness of a day.
I can't tell you how many times I quit only to realize that when the work has been your life, you don't really have a life without it.
To find the courage to do what I want to do for myself has been hard.
I'm not really out in the world all that much. I mean, I live with no phone signal, in the hills surrounded by trees, and I have, like, a mom and two baby deer that come by all the time, and my dogs and the squirrels are in a full-on feud every morning.
I went through a phase of eating dinner in the shower because I thought, 'Why don't we do that?' Then I realised, 'Because it doesn't make any sense.' It doesn't save any time, and you can't really get into a steak and baked potato when there's water pouring on you.
Each step of the way, I'm learning. When I leave an interview, I learn whether I feel, 'Oh, that was nice,' or that made me feel like a little piece of me was taken.
I think it's always the moments that are the trials that end up making you become a hero in the end. You're not a hero unless you've gone through the trials. And it makes these moments so much sweeter, so much better. I don't believe in 'deserved,' but I might believe in 'earned.'
I am becoming more recognisable in some ways, and some aspects of my privacy are going. But there's an upside: I have more opportunity to tell bigger stories and connect with more people. And I really relish that responsibility.
I'm really interested in mythology and folklore. I'm interested in moralities, why we're here, faith... all of these bigger questions that I think we can place in films that allow us to question and give us a safe place to feel. Those types of questions can pop up in all sorts of different types of films - drama, comedy, action movie.
If you're in somebody's head for 12 hours a day for four weeks, it's like your brain actually wires itself to start thinking that way.
The idea of singing and dancing throughout my life and finding that bliss is something I wanted to express and explore within myself and hopefully spread that idea to other people.
For the most part, I've stayed as far away as possible from high school movies. I just don't find them to be that relatable to everybody? They become like this: 'Look at that period of time. Isn't that interesting?'
I love storytelling.
I'm trying to find new ways to entertain myself because, if my whole world is doing interviews, I might as well put them in places I've wanted to see.
The cool thing about designers is they have very specific points of view, and because my inspiration is always changing, it's easy to go, 'This feels right.' But just because I wear fancy dresses on weekends doesn't mean in my heart of hearts I'm not a jeans and T-shirt person.
I had collages in my bedroom when I was a teenager.
Because we put ourselves in a movie or on TV, then it must mean we want to be completely open to the world. Sometimes, people will run up to you as if this is Disneyland and I'm a character. I understand their point of view, but it's difficult to explain how terrified it makes me. I'm so nervous.
I'm just not in a place in my life where I worry about something unnecessarily.
I'm not a gourmet. I just like the planet.
We've all recognized the moment when the world has handed us a situation that is bigger than our youth can handle, and we have to grow up in a second. And when you do get to the other side, all it does is take us to this new level of existence that is more beautiful and more complex and, in some ways, more painful.
I really love learning about animals. I pull from a deck of spirit animal cards. You pull one, and it's about 50 or 60 different animals, and then that day you read whichever animal you pull. And it kind of gives you insight.
I know what my dharma is: I'm supposed to be an actor.
In this industry, where things change so quickly, I've found that having no expectations is the happiest way to go.
