Brie Larson covers the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar. She’s an Oscar winner, she’s booked and busy, and she’s also just a normal woman. A huge part of this cover story is devoted to just that – Brie blends in with a crowd, she’s rarely recognized by fans or paparazzi and that’s just the way she likes it. She doesn’t want to be famous, she doesn’t want to be a movie star, she wants to be able to live her artist’s life and not be bothered. At various points in this piece, it feels like she has a small, delicate chip on her shoulder about it too, like “how dare you expect me to act like a celebrity?” Which is in itself a sort of celebrity privilege, even though I get her larger point. Like, I think Brie is talented and weird (in a nice way) – I also wish she would just understand that she doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone? People aren’t really checking on her either way – she’s free to do whatever she wants and God bless. Some highlights from Bazaar:
She needs anonymity to feed her soul. “I want to be in reality. I love reality. It’s all I want. My biggest fear is to not be in reality. It matters so much to me. I don’t wear super-flashy clothes when I’m out in the world because I want to stay in reality. I’m very good at confrontation in my relationships because I want to be in reality. I want to be in what’s as close to what’s true as possible.”
Her confusing CV: “I’m like, Well, if I said, ‘What would you like for breakfast a year from now?’ you would be like, I don’t know. I just don’t know.” She understands why people like consistency. “It makes them feel like everything is going to be okay.”
Her “boring” YouTube channel: “I wanted to prove that I could put stuff out and it wasn’t going to be like, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe she said that’ or ‘I can’t believe she did that.’” The past three years have given her perspective. She was grappling with big questions rooted in deep feelings, like “Am I allowed to exist? Am I allowed to just be lovable as I am? Am I worthy of just being here?”
She spent months preparing for ‘Room’ & it took her months to shake it: “You rewire your brain to think a certain way, and then you have to get an exit strategy. I didn’t have one. And it made me feel stupid, because I’m like, ‘This is not my life, but I feel it is. In my head.’”
She did ‘Captain Marvel’ even though it scared her: “I was scared of what would happen to me…I was like, ‘What world is this, where these are the choices I have to make as an artist?’” Ultimately, the opportunity warranted the risk, but a billion-dollar franchise generates expectations. Larson is diligent about containing them. “Anytime I feel like I’m being put too much on a pedestal, it’s my job to figure out how to remove that within myself.”
She is incapable of simply watching documentaries as research: “It’s like you’re just being a copy of a copy of a copy. You can’t play a character that’s based off of—I don’t know—watching documentaries and secondhand information.”
Her nerves around turning 30: “I had all the same normal fears as everybody else about being single and being 30…What do I want? How does a family and a future fit in with my weird life?” In October, she turned 33. “That’s such a big place to be in. Certain existential questions come up.”
She owns her choices: “What I always come back to is, I have to live with myself in a way that nobody else has to. The choices I make, I have to live with, whether I regret them or not. Artistically, I always understood that. But for some reason, as me, it’s been totally different. You can follow me around on set and be like, ‘Wow, she really knows what she’s doing.’ And then I go home and I’m like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’ I get insecure, and I think I’m not enough, or I have a hard time asking for help or speaking up for myself in relationships.”
She’s open to whatever. “I don’t have a next job. I don’t have a home. I don’t have a partner. I don’t have a plan. I’m just completely open,” she says. She’d like to have kids, though “how that happens, when that happens, in what capacity—I don’t know,” she says. She’s enjoying losing track of time (“I start to get back into What do I like to eat? What time do I wake up? What time do I go to sleep?”), exploring the world, going to art museums, and replenishing her creativity. Without this, she couldn’t take another job. “I have nothing left to give unless I go through this period of adventure.”
There’s a lot of talk about her YouTube channel, where she just hangs out and does crafts and talks about video games or whatever. She’s not doing that to be an influencer or to tell “her side” of fame or anything like that. She seems to just use her channel as another creative outlet to be off-beat and do crafts. For an actress, it honestly doesn’t feel performative? Like, I genuinely think she does all this off-beat stuff because she enjoys it, not because she’s trying to “change her image” or “make money.”
Cover & IG courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar.
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