Carey Mulligan is one of today's most talented stars. From her early years to her surprising
turn in Promising Young Woman, she's built an impressive film career. But her journey to stardom
wasn't always a straightforward one. Here's the stunning transformation of Carey Mulligan.
Carey Mulligan was born in London and moved to Germany when she was 3 years old,
on account of her father's job as a hotel manager. And from a young age, Mulligan realized
she wanted to act. She told The Guardian that while she was at a school in Germany:
"My brother was in The King and I, and I went to rehearsal and was completely
enraptured by the whole thing, and desperately wanted to be in it."
She allegedly wept until they gave her a part in the play. From then on, she said, she was:
"Just interested in one thing. I wanted to act."
Mulligan grew up asking her brother to write her plays. She eventually became
the student head of drama at her boarding school when she returned to the U.K,
according to The Times. Mulligan recalled:
"I was a drama geek, I was most definitely not one of the cool girls."
Alongside her interest in acting,
Carey Mulligan grew up with religion as another major influence in her life.
Her religious upbringing made her something of a goodie-two-shoes. She admitted to The Guardian:
"I had a terrible guilty conscience from an early age."
But she explained that religion wasn't a negative part of her life. She recalled:
"It provided a real community and that lasted into my adulthood."
Her love of church comes from the same impulse as her love of acting. Mulligan explained:
"You're surrounded by people all the time. And I love that about
going to church every week and singing in the choir."
As Mulligan told W, her relationship with religion didn't change much as she
grew up. It's still a big part of her life even though she keeps it private.
After graduating high school, Mulligan auditioned for drama departments at
three different universities. According to The Times, she was turned down by all three schools.
"I really wanted to go to drama school, I didn't get in, but I
was - which was totally understandable because I was ridiculously out of my depth."
Instead of giving up, Mulligan looked for another entry into the acting world.
Even though her parents wanted her to pursue a steadier career, she wrote to novelist and
creator Julian Fellowes, who had given a talk at her school. As fate would have it,
his wife replied and invited Mulligan to a dinner for aspiring actors.
Fellowes introduced Mulligan to director Joe Wright, who was looking for new faces for
his 2005 film Pride and Prejudice. Mulligan was cast as Kitty and the rest is history.
After appearing in Pride and Prejudice, Mulligan quickly found more success,
with roles in TV series including Bleak House,
My Boy Jack, and a theater production of The Seagull. She told The Telegraph:
"Every job I do is like going to drama school."
Carey Mulligan's early career took off quickly with a series of impressive roles.
But she initially struggled with feelings of inadequacy and doubt,
particularly in her first play. She told actor Margot Robbie in an interview for Vogue:
"The first play I did I was about 18, and the director had to prise me out of
my dressing room and force me into rehearsal and into the warm-ups because I was crying."
Mulligan explained that her co-stars in the
play all had professional training and theater experience. She said:
"I had done one film and had no idea what I was doing."
But just three years into her career, she had made a name for
herself on stage. In a theater review of The Seagull, The Telegraph wrote:
"Her reviews were certainly the stuff that careers are built on."
Mulligan told Vogue:
"I feel like I'm on a film set and I don't adapt anything else
other than making my voice louder, I still make the same choices."
Even though Carey Mulligan was hugely successful as a professional actress,
she realized the danger of falling into typecasting. She told The Guardian in 2014:
"I used to have a typecast thing, and I fought my age and baby face. When I was younger,
I used to play much younger than myself all the time and that got a little bit tiring."
Mulligan fit a certain type in her early acting years. In Pride and Prejudice,
she played 17-year-old Kitty, a young woman in the Regency period. In Bleak House, she played
the angelic young heiress Ada Clare. In Northanger Abbey, she took on the role of Isabella,
a slightly ditzy young lady. A corseted woman was quickly becoming Mulligan's forte, so she
distanced herself from these young, wide-eyed roles. Mulligan said about her recent roles:
"I don't think recently I've played a particular type."
Carey Mulligan quickly racked up an impressive list of credits in her 20s.
She was just 24 when she was nominated for her first Oscar for her performance in An Education.
When she wasn't appearing in starring roles in big-budget films like Shame,
Drive, and Far From the Madding Crowd, she was back on stage.
Mulligan confessed to The Times that she was a bit of a workaholic. She admitted:
"I used to freak out if I didn't have back-to-back work lined up."
When she wasn't on set or on stage, Mulligan was preparing for her roles, writing poems
and drawing into notebooks. Researching of roles also became a big part of her process. Mulligan
confessed that she did months of research for her role as Daisy in The Great Gatsby.
As Mulligan explained, her workaholic mentality developed out of imposter syndrome. She said:
"I didn't get into drama school, I didn't go to university, so this was my homework."
While Carey Mulligan can hardly complain about her career,
she did hit a point around 2011 when she started to feel unsure of her next move.
She told The Guardian after she had just made Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps:
"It was a great experience doing 'Wall Street,
but it didn't feel there was a depth to the character."
After being disappointed by the film and without any upcoming projects that
excited her, she felt slightly adrift. So Mulligan's agent took her to lunch
and gave her advice that changed her mindset. Her agent told her:
"You shouldn't take a role unless you can't bear the idea of anybody else doing it.
And so that's sort of been my way of working ever since."
It wasn't until the script for Shame came along that she found the meaty role she was looking for.
And being selective with her work is still something that the actress is careful to do.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Mulligan has
passed on big films because she knew the roles weren't the right choice for her.
As rumor has it, Carey Mulligan met Marcus Mumford, lead singer of the banjo-strumming
band Mumford and Sons, at church camp when the two were just 12 years old.
Mulligan and Mumford eventually reconnected at a house party in Nashville, Tennessee,
in February of 2011. The pair began dating soon after and less than a year later,
they got married. The Daily Mail reported that the wedding took place in a picturesque
barn in the British countryside with Mumford's father officiating the service.
Mulligan has always been private about their relationship. She told Vogue:
"Marcus is the only thing that's mine that I can keep totally away, so I try to."
The couple's friend, Sienna Miller, opened up to Vogue about their relationship,
sharing that what she loves about the couple is their normalcy. Miller said:
"They both come from very solid families and have a real sense of the life they want to live.
They have chickens and a dog, and roasts and friends, jams by campfires. It's sort of idyllic."
Carey Mulligan gave birth to her and Marcus Mumford's first child in 2015
and their second in 2017. While Mulligan is always very private about her family life,
becoming a mother was an eye-opener for the actress. She told Baby:
"It's undeniable — it changes everything."
After her first child, Mulligan ended up taking two years off from acting.
After her second, she was less afraid to get back to work. She said:
"With a second child, you're a lot less paranoid,
and I definitely felt I was ready for new challenges this time around."
Having kids made Mulligan choose projects with more
care and it gave her new insight into playing maternal figures.
She recalled that playing a mother in a film is a bit more intense now. Mulligan said:
"I'd played mothers before without having ever known what it's like to have your own child."
Despite being something of a workaholic, Carey Mulligan still finds time for charity
work. One of her biggest projects has been collaborating with War Child,
a charity for children who live in war torn areas. The actress explained to Glamour that being a
long-time ambassador for the charity became a very important part of her life and helped shape her
perspective on the world. On her first trip with the organization in 2014, she traveled to Goma,
Congo, where she met a young girl whose story stuck with her. Mulligan recalled:
"She would dream at night that men would come into her house in the middle of the night
shouting, hurt her, take her away. […] She was 11 years old, and that was her fear."
Mulligan realizes the privileges she has, living a comfortable
life in a safe environment. She has also realized her responsibility to speak up
and use her platform for those who are in need of a voice. She said:
"It feels like you have to do it."
Carey Mulligan's main focuses have always been career and family, but over the years,
a new focus appeared. She began to cherish her female friendships. She explained to Porter:
"My female friendships have become increasingly
important — particularly the ones with friends I made when I was 14 at school."
Mulligan says that these are the people who have been there with her through it all. As she put it:
"It's something about doing stages of life together and supporting each other."
Her school friends have become an important constant for Mulligan.
And her friendship bonds sound pretty adorable. Mulligan revealed:
"Every year, we do our birthdays together because
all our birthdays are within six days of one another. It's great."
Mulligan's female friends also offer her support when it comes to living a life in the public eye,
or, as she jokingly called it:
"Twitter and all that stuff."
While the coronavirus lockdown was difficult for just about everyone,
it did come with a few positives for Carey Mulligan and her family. Mulligan was finally
able to settle down and enjoy family life when everything shut down. The actress told Harper's
Bazaar that her life before the pandemic was undeniably hectic, with her husband spending
months on tour followed by her own time filming on location. The pandemic gave her a more normal
life. She developed new hobbies like knitting and even started reading regularly. She said:
"I've never been able to be part of a book club."
The pandemic also gave Mulligan a sense of some goodness in humanity. As she told Vogue:
"A lot of it is so sad but also when you see examples of humanity at its absolute best,
when people are really doing astonishing things."
Carey Mulligan took on the role of Cassie in the 2020 film Promising Young Woman,
written by Emerald Fennell. It's a film that really needs to be watched more than once.
Mulligan's part in the picture turned out to be something of a career-defining role. Not only
did she receive praise, nominations and awards, she got the chance to play a fascinating lead.
As Mulligan admitted to IndieWire, she was hooked from the moment she read the script. She said:
"That's what I loved so much, every five pages, getting wrong-footed. That was so
refreshing to read something and have no idea what was going to happen with each character."
Writer Emerald Fennell said that Mulligan was born to play the role.
"What do you think I'm talking about? I didn't do anything!
We were kids! If I hear that one more time."
The writer said:
"Carey is so good and just famously good and she chooses so carefully and
she's really always kept to her own journey in terms of what she picks."
Because Mulligan is naturally such a private person,
she has an enigmatic quality on screen. Fennell gushed about Mulligan, saying:
"She was my dream person."
Mulligan's career has led her to this fantastic project quite naturally and,
chances are, there will be many more great things to come from her.
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