CLEANING UP HER ACT

BOSTON -- Mattie Larson is trying to break into an all-star lineup, and perhaps because of that she is easily able to deliver the most forthright criticism of her gymnastics from USA team coordinator Martha Karolyi.

“She says I have to be more confident in my face and be more expressive and just, you know, project better,” Larson said last weekend after her practice session at All Olympia Gymnastics Center in Los Angeles.

As the daughter of two actors, she sees the irony.

Larson will need every advantage she can get, from an arena-encompassing smile to her soaring tumbling passes, to impress Karolyi at the Visa Championships tonight and Saturday. The event will advance at least 12 gymnasts to the Olympic trials in Philadelphia on June 19-22.

All six women from last year’s world championship team are back, as well as 2005 world all-around champion Chellsie Memmel and 2006 silver medalist Jana Bieger, both of whom missed most of last season because of injuries.

During podium training Wednesday, Karolyi spoke well of Larson: “She is a beautiful gymnast, very artistic and expressive, which is unusual with a young child like this. Also, she has a very good technique.”

Larson, who turned 16 last week, can do the math.

She has been making the monthly trips to Karolyi’s Texas ranch and hears the chatter. Defending world all-around champion Shawn Johnson, America’s Cup all-around gold medalist Nastia Liukin and vault and floor-exercise star and team leader Alicia Sacramone are considered near-locks to make the U.S. Olympic team.

That leaves three more spots on the six-member team, plus up to three alternate positions. The team won’t be announced until a scheduled training camp at the Texas ranch in July.

Larson is aiming for any one of those places and sees no reason why that won’t happen. As her father, Eric, says, “Mattie makes things go her way.”

She began her gymnastics career while still wearing diapers. Her older sister, Willie, began gymnastics classes and her mom, Gail, took Mattie along.

“I was holding Mattie on my hip,” Gail said. “She started kicking so I put her down and she crawled onto the mat.”

Gail was horrified, worried that her diaper-wearing toddler would be unsanitary, but Mattie was encouraged to crawl to her heart’s content on the mat.

The first Olympics she can remember watching was the 1996 Atlanta Games and to this day she lists “the Dominiques” -- Dawes and Moceanu -- as her gymnastics role models.

Being confident came naturally, too, for the Larson girls, given their parents’ careers.

Gail, who ran track at Seton Hall before she got the acting bug, met Eric at an acting class in Los Angeles. Her face is familiar; she has been on TV shows such as “Boy Meets World” and was Whoopi Goldberg’s sister in the 1990 movie “Ghost.” Eric’s career was more geared toward, as he put it, “bad sci-fi movies,” though he also appeared in the television mini-series “Billionaire Boys Club” and the ABC series “Once and Again.”

Eric wouldn’t give up the names of the movies, but Mattie found one.

“I Googled him,” she said. “He was in ‘Demon Wind.’ All the actors were terrible.”

While Willie gave up the sport and has now finished her sophomore year at USC, Mattie just keeps getting better, even as she attends Baldwin Park Charter, which allows her to take school assignments on the road.

Mattie’s tumbling earns rave reviews and Gail calls her daughter’s uneven bars routine “the bomb.” The rave reviews don’t come cheaply, however. Eric estimates the family spends $700 a month on gym time and another $400 a month on private lessons with former Bulgarian gymnast Galina Marinova.

This is Larson’s first try as a senior at the national championships. She finished sixth in the all-around at the 2007 junior nationals and third in floor exercise while recovering from a hip injury. She won junior all-arounds at the 2007 Pan American Games.

Even as it gets more complicated, gymnastics remains a family affair.

Gail has put her acting career on hold and works at the gym. Eric changed from acting to putting together floor routine music that he sells on a website.

“It took me two weeks to put together the music for Mattie’s first floor routine,” Eric Larson said. “I brought it to the gym and other parents wanted me to do their music. So that’s what I do.”

A story Eric tells about Mattie when she was 8 says it all.

“Willie had to run a timed mile at school,” he said. “Willie wasn’t running it very fast and she asked me why. Mattie heard that and got a look on her face and took off. She ran to the opposite end of the house and back and then stopped and said, ‘I know what I think about when I’m running. I think about winning.’

“And that’s the competitive thing Mattie has always had whether it was playing cards, sprinting, doing pull-ups or doing gymnastics.

“So I tell her now that she’s at the major leagues,” he said. “She tells me there’s one more goal. To win a championship.”

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diane.pucin@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Mattie Larson jumps in with both feet

Mattie watched the U.S. women win team gold at the 1996 Atlanta Games. Her mom, Gail, said the 4-year-old Mattie decided at that moment she wanted to be an Olympic gymnast.

“I told her she was awfully young to know that and that it would take a lot of hard work and she might even hurt herself.

“Mattie didn’t say a word. She just got up and did a half-gainer off the couch onto the chair next to it and said, ‘See, mom? I can do it.’

Diane Pucin

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Women’s gymnastics championships

What: USA Visa National women’s gymnastics championships.

When: Today, 4 p.m. PDT; Saturday, 12:30 p.m. PDT.

Where: Agganis Arena at Boston University.

TV: Saturday, 1 p.m. PDT, Channel 4.

What’s at stake: The top 12 finishers in all-around automatically advance to U.S. Olympic trials June 19-22 in Philadelphia, as will an undetermined number of at-large selections.

WHOM TO WATCH

Shawn Johnson, 16, Des Moines, Iowa, who went undefeated in 2007 and won the world championships all-around title.

Nastia Liukin, 18, Parker, Texas, who beat Johnson in March at the Tyson American Cup in New York and three weeks later won the all-around title at the Pacific Rim Championships in San Jose.

Alicia Sacramone, 20, Winchester, Mass., who won silver behind Johnson on the floor at the 2007 worlds and who is the defending national champion in vault.

Ivana Hong, 16, Blue Springs, Mo., who grew up in Laguna Hills and who was the surprise fourth-place finisher at the 2007 national championships in all-around.

-- Diane Pucin

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THE FACTS

USA Visa National women’s gymnastics championships (all times PDT):

When: Thursday, 4 p.m.; Saturday, 12:30 p.m.

Where: Agganis Arena at Boston University.

TV: Saturday, 1 p.m., Ch. 4