Brie Larson Revealed She ‘Struggled With Feeling Ugly and Like an Outcast’
Brie Larson has a cool confidence on screen and off, but the actor admits that she struggled with her fair share of insecurities in the past. In a new interview, she discusses the unrealistic beauty standards that women feel they have to achieve and how she felt “like an outcast” in the past.
Brie Larson admitted she felt insecure in the past
In an interview with W magazine, Larson was asked what she would say to women who feel they can’t keep up with unrealistic beauty standards or who feel like they aren’t represented. The actor shared, “I don’t believe that there is a beauty standard,” adding, “I struggled with feeling ugly and like an outcast for so much of my life.”
She continued, “And so I really, really feel for that. It took me a long time to be able to be totally comfortable with myself.”
Larson explained how she “can be whoever I want to be with myself,” something she said gives her “solace.”
“What breaks my heart is to think of people in the world who don’t feel that they have safety within their own bodies,” she continued. “That, to me, is my ultimate goal in life: to do whatever it is that I can so people have the freedom to express themselves and be exactly who it is that they want to be — whatever that is — knowing that that can also change.”
Larson shared some of her past struggles
In celebration of her 31st birthday, Larson posted a YouTube video where she reflected on her past. “One of the pieces I think in getting older for me has been just like liking myself as I am and that’s like an inside thing and an outside thing.”
She explained how, growing up, she wanted better and thicker hair after “seeing girls that had really beautiful, they could braid their hair really beautifully … and that’s not me. My hair looked pretty scraggly.”
Larson added, “I think growing up in an industry that is just, I don’t know, I think sometimes it’s just filled with images of people that just like are rare exceptions of what human beings look like. And I get caught up in it too.”
“I guess at a certain point, I had to give up on all of it … there’s like a phase of a lot of red carpet photos where I have no makeup on, my hair’s wet, I just got out of the shower and it was in a way to revolt against all of that,” she shared. “To just not be like that.”
Larson found confidence came with experience
Larson explored the idea of time and experience and definitely coming into her own. “Then I started feeling like, once I was comfortable in my skin … then I felt like I could actually explore hair and makeup in a way that I couldn’t previously,” she explained.
The actor said that during the Captain Marvel press tour, she felt like she was “really stepping into the glamour of it, that I could enjoy hair and makeup. That I could enjoy the process of becoming a character and standing on a red carpet and feeling good and confident and not that I was a fraud.”
