Oscar winner talks about her new film and the superhero role to come,
Oscar winner returns to TIFF for premiere of thriller Free Fire. Next up: her superhero debut
Brie Larson wants to make movies that show different kinds of women on the big screen.
Women like Justine, the lone female in director Ben Wheatley’s 1970s-set crime caper Free Fire, the low key-yet-crafty arms broker she portrays in the action film that opened TIFF’s Midnight Madness Thursday.
She’s a departure for Larson. Unlike the “more intellectual, more in your head,” roles, including her Best Actress Oscar-winning portrayal of Ma in Room, “this was very physical.”
Larson and co-star Sharlto Copley ( District 9), who plays mouthy South African arms dealer Vernon, agreed they’d enjoyed the experience of seeing Free Fire premiere before the festival’s typically enthusiastic crowd that packs the slate of witching-hour flicks.
“They were just more vocal,” said Copley, whose first person-perspective thriller Hardcore Henry screened in Midnight Madness last year. “I loved the experience and last year was my first time watching with fans that were as crazy as they get at Midnight Madness.”
With Free Fire, Larson and Copley are part of a sizable ensemble cast, including Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, Sam Riley and Michael Smiley.
They all go into a derelict Boston warehouse to make a gun deal but things don’t go as planned and bullets start flying.
Characters hit the dirt in the warehouse amid gunfire and spend the rest of the movie crawling around the place to evade flying bullets, insulting each other while trying to escape in one piece.
“I’d never done anything like that before so I was, like, amazed by the whole process and was ready to throw myself onto the ground and get tons of bruises and not ask for padding because I didn’t know that’s what you’re supposed to do,” said Larson with a laugh. “But I had an amazing time.”
Free Fire marks Larson’s return to TIFF, where Room won the People’s Choice Award last September. She included the Toronto festival in her thanks when she accepted her Oscar five months later.
“That’s important to me,” said Larson, who added film festivals can decide if an independent movie such as Room survives or falls.
“If you’re going to get up there on that stage and thank the people that got you to that moment, I wouldn’t have been there without Telluride and I wouldn’t have been there without TIFF,” she said.
As for her co-star, 9-year-old Canadian actor Jacob Tremblay, he’s also at TIFF with a new movie, Burn Your Maps.
But the two won’t be meeting up. Larson had to leave Toronto hours after Free Fire premiered.
They do keep in touch via email. “He dictates to his dad and his dad writes to me,” Larson explained.
Larson said she’s interested in bringing more independent female characters like Free Fire’s Justine to the screen. She starts out “sort of mysterious and sort of a stereotype” but uses her “doting” role as a tool to undermine the macho guys around her, showing she’s capable of being equally cold blooded.
Larson said she is anxious to see more diverse female casts onscreen, including women of different ethnicities and backgrounds and those with different body shapes.
“I think being an artist is a privilege and we need to expand upon what that privilege really is,” said Larson.
“For me, I’m stuck in this body that I have but what I want to do with it is at least show that you can be all types of people . . . we’re all different kinds of women. We don’t have to be just one.”
She’ll direct her first feature next year, The Unicorn Store, and in 2019, Larson will step into a whole new arena, starring in Marvel Studios’ first woman-led superhero film, Captain Marvel.
“That was the reason for doing it,” she said of the trail-blazing role.
“I’m a very private person and not interested in doing films because I want my face to be plastered on more things.
“I’m very choosy about what it is that I do,” she added, pointing out she was reminded how film can speak to people after she saw the powerful reactions audiences had to Short Term 12 and Room.
“This is what I want to dedicate my life to and when the opportunity came to play this symbol of femi- nism, to play this empowering role for women and it’s on kind of arguably the biggest platform that we have right now, it’s undeniable that this is an important step and I want to be part of it,” she said.