(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 19 November 2025 4:30, UK
A necessity for any creative is a thick skin. No one can survive in the entertainment industry without a healthy ability to shake rejection off and bounce back. That being said, I have no idea how Brie Larson has survived missing out on not one, not two, but three huge roles in three huge projects.
Obviously, she’s done pretty well without them. After kicking off her career with a solid run of cameos and small roles during her childhood and teenager years, a brief foray into teen pop stardom and then a transition period populated by a few sitcoms and drama TV shows, she refreshed her career as an adult when she played the iconic Envy Adams in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
From there, she stayed booked and busy with comedies like 21 Jump Street and Don Jon, coming-of-age flicks like The Spectacular Now and crime dramas like The Gambler, showing her range. But she truly showed her power when she played Joy Newsome in the absolutely devastating Room.
Portraying a young woman who was kidnapped as a child and has been held captive ever since, forced to give birth and raise her son in one room with no natural light, her mission to escape gave Larson the gut-wrenching, impactful role that finally showed off her abilities. Winning her ‘Best Actress’ at the 2015 Oscars, clearly, Larson’s career hasn’t been a failure.
However, given the roles she auditioned for and missed out on, it could have gone down a very different path, or kicked off much earlier.
Brie Larson in ‘Room’. (Credits: Far Out / A24)
“I auditioned for Star Wars too,” she recalled in a YouTube video. She even clarified that she didn’t just mean one movie, but literally all of the most recent episodes of the Star Wars trilogy, failing to get cast each and every time.
“I auditioned for Hunger Games,” she said as she was running down her biggest failures. She auditioned for the leading role of Katniss Everdeen, which was eventually given to Jennifer Lawrence and became one of her most defining characters as the book franchise was translated into a powerful film series too. For Larson, it was another big miss.
They keep on coming. “I auditioned for the Terminator reboot,” she said, adding that to the list of major roles she missed out on. After auditioning for the role of Sarah Connor, it went to Emilia Clarke instead.
It’s a lot of rejection to handle, and not even small rejections either, but huge, career-changing rejections from roles that could have levelled up her career to whole new levels. Really, the rejections started even earlier as back when she was a child actor, she missed out on the role of Wendy in the 2003 adaptation of Peter Pan, developing her thick skin early.
But it’s best not to dwell on the what-ifs, especially when Larson does still have plenty of powerful roles and plenty of accolades on her CV.
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