Brie Larson: 'My room used to be covered in Spice Girls posters!'

Brie Larson wanted to be Ginger Spice when she was younger.

The 26-year-old star has been acting since she was 11 but it's this year's critically-acclaimed film Room that has really made her a household name. Growing up though, Brie had some different ambitions for her future.

"I had a lot of Spice Girls posters," Brie laughed to ASOS magazine. "I wanted to be Ginger Spice so bad!"

As well as her acting skills, Brie is also a certified scuba diver, and admits that exploring the ocean is the perfect antidote to "dark" movies such as Room, which tells the story of a mother and her son kept captive by her sexual abuser.

She is now hoping to conquer a different aspect of diving, and always wants to push herself as much as she can.

"I want to be an advanced diver. You have to have more training to go into a cave," she explained. "I’m also interested in underwater photography, because the light is different through the water. From making movies I’ve got obsessed with light and the way it reflects. I love anything to do with the ocean. There was a time when I thought I was going to be a marine biologist."

One thing's for sure - Brie isn't one to sit on her laurels. When it comes to her time off, she prefers to spend it enrolling in online classes rather than frittering it away.

"There’s so much free information available to you," Brie said when asked about the coolest thing about being a 20-something in 2016. " I’m constantly taking online college classes. I’ve learned so much, from Greek history to astronomy. I’m a visual person and there are so many people making great videos. At school I found it hard to sit and listen to a teacher talking, but now I can learn in my own time.

"The internet’s an amazing resource if you use it to learn, not just to find out what Kim Kardashian shampoos her hair with. I don’t care about Kim’s shampoo, maybe her conditioner… a little bit, but not the shampoo."