Brie Larson: I did not think I could be strong before Captain Marvel training

Brie Larson has said she did not think it would be possible to transform her body before she started her training for Captain Marvel.

The Oscar winning actress plays the first female Marvel superhero to get a standalone movie – and embarked on a gruelling regime of intensive weight training, as well as tae kwon do, judo, and boxing, which left her able to deadlift 225lbs and push a Jeep.

She told the Press Association: “My goal was just to train really hard for nine months and see what happened, and I didn’t even think it was possible for me.

“And the reason why I did it was basically for this, for these moments, for these conversations, when we are discussing what it feels like or what it looks like to be a female, a self-identified female, and be strong.

“I want to start those conversations and highlight that I went from not feeling like I was capable of that to really being able to embody this in a new way.”

While she is making history with the upcoming film, Larson said she does not feel the weight of responsibility that comes with the part of Carol Danvers.

She said: “I don’t know if I’m crazy, because so many people have been like, ‘You must feel pressure, you must feel responsibility’, and I’m like, ‘I don’t, is that bad?’

“I just don’t think that it’s helpful to me or helpful to this story or helpful to the work to feel that way. For me it’s just like I really love this character, I love Carol, and I think there is a lot of value in it.

“I just wanted to focus on the best job I could do, and I know especially with a movie this big it seems like it’s like this public thing – but when you’re on set it’s super private so that is how it felt, it felt like we were making a small movie.”

However, Larson said it was important to her to highlight that Danvers, who was a US Air Force pilot, was a strong and impressive woman long before she was a superhero.

She said: “There is a through line highlighting the incredible women that we have in the air force, but the other thing for me that I love about that, is that she is incredible in breaking barriers and doing amazing things even before she had super powers.

“That is an important fact to this too, it’s not like these powers were the thing that made her remarkable, they just highlighted what was already in her.”

Captain Marvel is released in UK cinemas on March 8.