10 Actors That Totally Overprepared For A Role
8. Brie Larson Wrote Diaries In Character - Room
2015 Best Picture winner Room is all about captivity. Brie Larson, playing the lead role of Joy Newsome, is the victim of kidnapping and abuse as she is forced to live in a single room for years with her young son who has never seen the outside world.
It's dark, harrowing and heart-breaking but beautifully shot and performed by its central players. To prime herself for the part, Larson researched and spoke to psychiatrists about trauma and malnutrition. In order to better understand the loneliness, she stayed in her house for a month by herself and got into Joy’s mindsets - fleshing the role out by writing in-character diary entries from previous points in Joy’s life that might have led her to the moment of her capture.
But it wasn’t just about that character’s separation from the world. It was important that Larson and her seven year old co-star Jacob Tremblay spent time together to form a believable bond. The actors saw each other repeatedly for three weeks before shooting, improvising scenes and playing with toys. Some of these they even built together and these appear on the film’s set.
Chemistry between actors is important at the best of times but for a film that is all about isolation and dependency, these extra steps of preparation helped create a film that many called the best of its year.