Brie Larson

I wasn't perfect and didn't have it together. I felt alone. So through acting, I decided to be a shape shifter and with every role become the character instead of being myself. It meant about 10 years of no one knowing I was the same person in every movie.

Maybe you're not perfect, but you're willing to actually look at yourself and take some kind of accountability. That's a change. It might not mean that you can turn everything around, but I think there's something incredibly hopeful about that.

When I was seven, I had been very vocal about wanting to be an actor. And my mom decided that we would try it out for a couple weeks and come to L.A. from Sacramento.

We lived in just a studio apartment with just a room and a bed that came out of the wall, and my mom couldn't afford even a Happy Meal. We ate Top Ramen. I had no toys, and I had, like, two shirts, a pair of jeans, and that was it. But I had my mom to myself, and I remember it being the coolest period of time. I loved it. I really loved it.

I didn't realise how hard it was to be a mom and keep it all together.

I was home-schooled, was always very close with my mom, and was very straight-laced and square. I was never the rebellious one, and I never threw hissy fits. I was the type of person that would show a Powerpoint presentation about why I should do something versus crying and screaming over it.

There were times my mom and I butted heads - over my curfew, over something like that. Whenever we would hit these moments of emotional backfire, she would say, 'You just don't understand what it's like to be a mother... I could never handle losing you.' I was like, 'OK, but just, like, chill out.'

I was home-schooled, was always very close with my mom and was very straight-laced and square. I was never the rebellious one, and I never threw hissy fits.

We had very few things. I had a couple pairs of jeans, a couple shirts. And same with my mom and sister. I think my sister had, like, two toys. We were living off of instant noodles.

I was born in Sacramento but moved to Los Angeles with my mom and my little sister when I was seven.

I was 3 when I told my mom that I knew what my dharma was and that I wanted to be an actor.

I love discussing social issues, but I'm not interested in scare tactics. I believe there is a way to bring awareness in tandem with forgiveness and love.

The entire process of making a movie is sort of blind trust because, otherwise, all of it just doesn't make any sense: the fact that we can create any sense of reality or emotion given the arbitrariness of a day.

I'm really interested in mythology and folklore. I'm interested in moralities, why we're here, faith... all of these bigger questions that I think we can place in films that allow us to question and give us a safe place to feel. Those types of questions can pop up in all sorts of different types of films - drama, comedy, action movie.

I started acting in second grade - my first role was in the Thanksgiving play. I was the Indian chasing the turkey. All the other mom's encouraged my mom to get me into acting after that. Also, when I saw 'The Sound of Music' at Music Circus, I knew I wanted to act.

To find the courage to do what I want to do for myself has been hard.

As I have had to meet different challenges, I realize I am coming into myself, and whatever I'm wearing is another chance for me to explore a new version of myself.

I just don't want to stop finding things interesting. I don't want to ever stop learning. I want to be a weird encyclopedia of bizarre knowledge.