Brie Larson Said That It Took Her “A Long Time” To Be Able To Enjoy The “Basic Things” In Her Life Again After Filming “Room,” Which Is Why She Hasn’t Done Anymore “Dark” Movies
This article briefly mentions sexual assault.
Brie Larson was just 7 years old when she first started acting, and spent her teen years appearing in various TV shows and movies — even launching a short-lived music career when she was 16 years old.
However, she arguably didn’t get her breakthrough role until she was in her mid-20s when she was cast as Ma in the critically acclaimed movie Room.
Released in 2015, Room is based on Emma Donoghue’s bestselling novel of the same name and tells the story of a young woman who was kidnapped as a teenager and held captive for seven years alongside her 5-year-old son, Jack, who was born in captivity, played by Jacob Tremblay.
The Hollywood Reporter previously revealed that everybody from Emma Watson to Rooney Mara was considered for the lead character, but director Lenny Abrahamson cast Brie after watching her 2013 indie movie Short Term 12.
Suffice to say, Brie turned out to be the right woman for the job, with the star wowing viewers and critics alike with her emotional performance that ultimately earned her the Best Actress Academy Award.
But playing survivor Ma was no mean feat. Before taking on the role, Brie consulted with a trauma expert and nutritionist, followed a restrictive diet, and avoided sunlight in a bid to add more authenticity to her performance.
Discussing Room in an interview with AV Club ahead of its 2015 release, Brie explained: “I spoke with a trauma specialist about the sexual abuse and what would happen to a mind after you’ve been stuck in that space for seven years. Because it’s different than, say, a week in, you’d start to normalize some stuff.”
“Then I spoke with a nutritionist about the lack of vitamin D, about not having a toothbrush, not being able to wash your hair or face, lack of nutrition, and what that might look like,” she went on. “From there, I was able to find the fact in it, and then I could find a way to relate to it.”
But, of course, this took a physical toll on Brie’s body, with the star telling City News: “There was the physical nature of that, the lack of vitamin D, because I couldn’t go in the sun, and then on top of that working a 12-hour day. It took a lot to recoup at the end of the day; I needed a lot of sleep.”
The movie was also shot mostly in chronological order over 59 days, which meant that Brie’s first scenes were the ones that showed Ma and Jack trapped in captivity.
Then, halfway through, everything changes when Ma masterminds Jack’s escape from the room, leading to their freedom and her reuniting with her parents.
Interestingly, Brie previously said that she found the scenes in the room easier to film, telling AV Club: “At that point, she’s suppressing everything. There’s not a lot of intensity and being upset, because she doesn’t fully realize what it is. She’s numb to what’s going on."
“It’s not until she’s at home in a safe place that everything starts to come to the surface,” she continued. “She has to negotiate who she was with who she is now, come face-to-face with her mother and father. It becomes much more complicated.”
At the time, Brie admitted that the whole thing was “emotionally traumatic,” explaining: “To hold on to that level of intensity certainly requires more energy from your body than my typical day.”
“I had a lot of things to support myself set in place when we started shooting,” she shared. “I was really open with my friends and family about what it was that I was doing. I made sure they stayed close and mailed me care packages, sort of to remind me of who I still was.”
She also said it was no coincidence that the project she moved on to after Room was action film Free Fire, saying: “You shake it off by jumping into something else that uses a completely different muscle. You wear out certain muscles. With something like Room, I was like: ‘Next year or two of jobs, I can’t cry. I can’t cry anymore!’ I’m looking for something to laugh over.”
Fast-forward almost a decade, and Brie has now revealed that she still steers clear of movies that are as “dark” as Room because it ended up taking her a full year to recover from the project.
Reflecting on emotionally challenging roles during the Hollywood Reporter’s Drama Actress Roundtable, the star told her peers: “These are things that are living inside of you that I don’t know if you would’ve given a life to [otherwise], and sometimes they’re really beautiful, and sometimes they’re sad and scary or keep you up at night.”
“The hardest part for me has not been committing to the characters, it’s getting out of them,” Brie continued. “I basically haven’t done anything as dark as Room since Room because it took me a year to get out of it, and it was really scary.”
“It took me a long time to be able to just do basic things that I used to enjoy in my life,” she added. “You hope that you have the grace of a line producer who’s scheduled it so that there are moments where you can offload.”
Brie went on to reveal that she didn’t have that opportunity while shooting her 2023 TV series Lessons in Chemistry, and the fact that her character constantly held in her emotions took a toll.
“Eventually, I was like: ‘You have to put a pop-up tent on set, and that’s where I’m going to go cry,’” she said. “Because sometimes it feels so intense, and I’m like, ‘I can’t do it anymore!’ So, you have to find ways to offload. I put a lot of board games on set. You have to find what works for you.”
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