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Many actors dream of landing a lead role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, when Brie Larson was offered the role of Carol Danvers for the 2019 film Captain Marvel, she was hesitant. The Academy Award-winning actress was worried that she would get lost in the role and wasn’t sure if she should take it.

“I was offered the role of Captain Marvel, and I was really nervous about saying yes to it,” Brie Larson says during a panel at Space Con 2025. “I literally sat down with a piece of paper and wrote down why it made me so scared to say yes. And what I realized in doing that was it had nothing to do with Carol, it had nothing to do with the film, or the opportunity itself.”

“I was really an introvert, and I was very worried about all the things that would come after. I was worried about lack of privacy. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to have a voice or I would have stage fright doing something like this. And I felt like I would let people down and I wouldn’t be a person anymore if I did it.”

“Once I broke it down, I was able to go, ‘Okay, looks like I need a therapist. I know when this movie is coming out. I’ve got a couple of years. So, that gives me three years of runway to figure out what matters to me in my life, what I’m going to protect, what’s going to be private for me, and to also make sure that I always have the right to go to the grocery store, I have the right to go to an art museum, because I want to keep playing real human beings that you relate to for the rest of my life.”

“For me, the only way I feel like I can do that is if there are parts of my life where I just get to be a person that’s annoying you in line. I want the right to be that. Once I was able to figure that out, I was able to do the thing that I love and the big bite I was afraid to take.”

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters