Credit: Far Out / YouTube Still
Thu 15 October 2026 3:30, UK
Brie Larson’s career would have gone down a completely different route if she had landed a franchise role as a child.
Although she was one of the youngest ever winners of the ‘Best Actress’ Academy Award when she took home the prize for her performance in Room, she was by no means a newbie, having made her acting debut on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1999 when she was eight.
While she isn’t typically thought of as a ‘child star’ in the Natalie Portman or Keira Knightley vein, she was auditioning while she was still in primary school, and even landed a few minor roles in films like 13 Going on 30 and Hoot. However, Larson’s most desired role was one that she never got.
“Did I have any business even auditioning for Spy Kids? Absolutely not,” she candidly declared before adding, “Did I want to be a child-spy? Definitely.”
A somewhat forgotten series because of the poor reception to later instalments, Spy Kids was a true phenomenon that existed at the point when live-action family films were still being made regularly. While aimed at a younger audience, it had a tremendous amount of style, thanks to the directorial flair of Robert Rodriguez.
The director brought in legitimate actors like Carla Gugino and Antonio Banderas to play the parents of the main characters, and the first film is relatively clever in how it tells a familiar espionage adventure story from a very different perspective. The first three films were made in quick succession, releasing every consecutive year from 2001 to 2003, but Rodriguez tempted luck when he returned to the franchise in 2011 for Spy Kids: All the Time in the World.
This fourth entry was a flop that stalled its future until he returned yet again, after more than ten years, in 2022 for the Netflix film Spy Kids: Armageddon, which barely made any waves when it debuted (given that no follow-up has been announced). Rodriguez has unfortunately been on a run of flops and misfires for well over a decade at this point, and not even returning to familiar franchises like Spy Kids and Sin City has been able to salvage his career.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
Larson may have been disappointed to miss out, although it presumably would not have been one of the leads, given how important Hispanic heritage is to the characters. Nonetheless, she soon got a much more substantial part in the Showtime series The United States of Tara before becoming an indie breakout star, appearing in many acclaimed films ahead of Room.
The post-Oscar era of her career has been a bit disappointing, given that she has staked herself in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the role of Carol Danvers in Captain Marvel, which admittedly was a massive hit that grossed over $1billion, but its success had more to do with the general popularity of the MCU at the time, released less than two months before Avengers: Endgame. Its sequel, The Marvels, is the lowest-grossing film in the MCU and one of the biggest flops of all time.
Larson is too talented to waste the rest of her career making franchise sequels like Fast X and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, but next year’s horror film Skeletons might be the comeback that she is looking for.
