Brie Larson Once Shared Being Rejected in Past Movie Auditions Inspired Her Performance in ‘Room’

Brie Larson went through a lot of preparation for her Oscar-winning role in Room. To deliver on one of her most critically acclaimed performances, she felt she might have drawn from her past failures in Hollywood.

How Brie Larson ended up in ‘Room’

Room was a 2015 feature directed by filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson and adapted from the novel of the same name. The film followed the life of a kidnapped young mother raising her child inside of a confined space. Larson would eventually end up in the role as the mother Ma, but she was initially the furthest thing from Abrahamson’s mind.

“Once we realized the movie was really going to happen, we started thinking in a concrete way about casting and drawing up a very short, short list of interesting actresses of the right age to play Ma,” Abrahamson once said in an interview with KCET. “Someone in the office said, ‘By the way, you should check out this film, Short Term 12. It’s really good and there’s an amazing actress in it.'”

Abrahamson was reluctant to listen to the suggestion at first. But later he’d watch Short Term 12, and was impressed with Larson after seeing her in the feature.

“I had a couple of hours, and there was a DVD, so I watched it, and I realized what an extraordinary actor Brie is. I met her in L.A. We were supposed to talk for half an hour, and we talked for about four hours,” he said.

This might have been a surprise to Larson. The young actor was already a fan of the book Room was based on. But she didn’t imagine herself in the main role as Ma when reading it.

“I never pictured that it would be my face,” she told Collider about the character.

Her preparation and dedication to the role may have proven that she was the perfect choice for Ma.

Brie Larson felt her past auditions helped her with ‘Room’

As is the case with many actors, making it in Hollywood wasn’t an easy feat for Larson. The Marvel star didn’t even want to be reminded at one point about all the roles she missed out on.

“The one I’ve been thinking about a lot is…I don’t even want to know how many times I’ve auditioned for things,” she once said in an interview with Thrillist. “Like, I’m sure it’s close to tens of thousands of auditions since I was seven until now. And if you look at my IMDb, I didn’t get ten thousand jobs, so imagine all of those no’s, and how many times that really hurt, being told that I was too tall or I was too short or I didn’t have blue eyes.”

She asserted that all of the rejection she experienced brought her a lot of distress as a young actor. After the success of her career, however, Larson looked back on those rejections as a blessing in disguise. So much so she doubted she could do roles as heavy as Room without her past rejections.

“All of those pains, all of those times that it took me through some sort of dark night of the soul, are the reasons why I can do a Room, the reason why I can do a Short Term 12,” she said. “If I was some person who had never experienced pain in their life, imagine how confusing it would be to play a dramatic role.”

Brie Larson once named all of the projects she was rejected for

Not too long ago, Larson started a Youtube channel allowing fans a little more insight into both her professional and personal life. In one of her Brie Larson videos, she opened up a bit about the many roles she was rejected for. They were parts in movies like Sucker Punch, Avatar, Spy Kids, and many more. The constant rejections even convinced her to momentarily step away from her acting dreams.

“I can make a lot of jokes and a lot this is talking in hindsight because I get to be an actor. But it didn’t mean that it didn’t suck,” Larson said. “I don’t have the language to describe the emotions every step of the way that I felt and how devastated I felt. And there were times that I quit.”

Of course the actor persevered, and found herself becoming one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.