یو بینک ہوم لون - گورنمنٹ مارک اپ سبسڈی اسکیم

What's happening to Brie Larson at this moment is every actor's dream. On the heels of her Room triumph, the star goes gargantuan in her next project, Kong: Skull Island. Holly Millea finds her in the quiet before the storm…and she's ready.​

It's the perfect Throwback Thursday photo: a teenage Brie Larson posing, clearly under the influence of Britney Spears, hip cocked in the middle of a Hula-Hoop, wearing hip-huggers and a short, fitted, cap-sleeve yellow tee that states in bold-pink capital letters: I'M GOING SOMEWHERE BETTER LATER. Like a clue to where she was headed, her dangling earrings are great big stars.

The picture, floating around on the Internet, is funny now, ironic, even, given the way she navigated from one better place to the next, and where "better" has ended up being.

Larson enters West Hollywood's Sunset Marquis hotel, wearing a white alpaca sweater with red-striped sleeves, skintight jeans, patent leather ASOS ankle boots, and a wide, bright smile. She carries herself like an athlete, lean and solid, surefooted—the last person to ever get mugged. Yet her energy is warm and familial, literally embracing. She hugs big and strong. "Brie makes you feel at ease," says Amy Schumer. "The first time I met her, it felt like we were childhood friends."

An expert at imprinting, in movie after movie, whatever the role, Larson's the bright star that follows you home…as nutty rocker Envy Adams opposite Michael Cera in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010); the raging, emotionally abandoned daughter of Woody Harrelson in Rampart(2011); Jonah Hill's prom quest in 21 Jump Street (2012); Miles Teller's bittersweet heartbreak inThe Spectacular Now (2013); and Grace, a troubled supervisor caring for troubled teens in Short Term 12 (2013), a cri de coeur performance that crystallized Larson's forte—playing open and possible and true—not so much acting on-screen as existing.

Destin Daniel Cretton, Short Term 12's writer and director, recalls a scene in which Larson's character, overwhelmed by memories of her childhood abuse, loses control. "We were like, how are we going to make this believable?" Cretton says. "And I said, 'Let's just go try it.' Brie tried it, and afterward she looked at me and said, 'What the fuck was that?' Because it came out so real, and there's no way of directing someone into that moment. She's emotionally improvising every single time she plays a scene. It's exciting to watch. I never know what's going to happen, and often she doesn't know what's going to happen." It's not for nothing that Larson calls movie sets her "safe place to be unsafe."

At the same time, says her Spectacular Now director, James Ponsoldt, "she's an incredibly specific actor, so in control. When she's doing a comedic performance, things like Scott Pilgrim, 21 Jump Street, her timing is impeccable. She's an unbelievable comedienne. She reminds me of a young Madeline Kahn." (Kahn's classic films include What's Up, Doc?, Young Frankenstein, and Paper Moon.)

Up until recently, Larson's talent for shape-shifting allowed her to move easily through the world, but now that she's morphed from Schumer's sunny, blond, domesticated little sister in the box-office hit Trainwreck to the dark, desperate, damaged mother, "Ma," in the critically acclaimed, multi-award-nominated Room, all that's changed.

"People have a Brie Larson neuron," she says. "So if I enter a restaurant, whether they want it or not, I'm a face that, when they see me, a part of their brain lights up and goes, 'Oh, I know this person'—the same way as if your sister walked in. To have that simultaneously happening with my own personal journey of playing Ma, whose perception of the world is fearful, and who has a lot of issues with males and is afraid of being noticed, afraid of standing out, afraid of being a target—to have that be crashing simultaneously with being more of a public face—really weird."

Larson frets; she knows there's no having it both ways. "Will there be a time when I can't just go to a museum alone, to just be a pedestrian?" she says. "Lindsay Lohan could not be a pedestrian anymore. She couldn't go anywhere and not be treated differently, talked to differently, looked at differently. And that's the thing that's eating her alive."

As hummingbirds hum above the Sunset Marquis garden restaurant, fat koi swim in the pond below, and diners' neurons fire all around, Larson sits and scans the menu. You can see how readily her face—free of makeup, with high cheekbones and hooded, brown, intelligent eyes—lends itself to transformation. She can be the weary migrant mother in a Dorothea Lange photograph, the stunning dominatrix in a Helmut Newton ad. Right now, as herself, she's simply lovely. And hungry. "Always hungry," Larson says, turning to the waiter: "Can I have scrambled egg whites with vegetables, whole wheat toast, and berries instead of potatoes?" Welcome to awards season, that time of year when even Fitbit addicts see a red carpet looming like a plank.