Carey Mulligan

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Carey Mulligan was sixteen when she wrote a letter to Kenneth Branagh. She had seen him perform in a production, and his presence on stage left her certain about what she wanted from life. In her letter she asked for his advice. The reply came from Branagh's sister, and it was blunt: "Kenneth says that if you feel such a strong need to be an actress, you must be an actress."

  That one sentence from a stranger's household is where the English actress's career begins. It raises questions this documentary will follow. Who tried to talk her out of it, and why did their warnings fail? Which role turned an unknown into a name that critics compared with a Hollywood legend? What draws a film star back to the stage again and again? And what does she do with her attention when the cameras are off?

  1

• 2. A Stubborn Vocation

  ›

  Carey Hannah Mulligan was born in London on the 28th of May 1985, to Nano, née Booth, and Stephen Mulligan. Her father worked as a hotel manager. He has Irish roots and is originally from Liverpool. Her mother, a university lecturer, comes from Llandeilo in Wales. The two met while both were working in a hotel in their twenties. Years later, in the 2019 television series My Grandparents' War, Mulligan explored the story of her maternal grandfather, Denzil Booth. He served as a naval radar artillery officer on HMS Indefatigable at the Battle of Okinawa, and later sailed into Tokyo Bay at the end of World War II.

  When Carey was three, her father's work took the family to West Germany. She and her brother attended the International School of Düsseldorf. At eight, she moved back to the United Kingdom with her family. As a teenager she was educated at Woldingham School, an independent school in Surrey.

  She was six when she watched her brother perform in a school production of The King and I. She wanted in. During rehearsals she pleaded with his teachers, and they let her join the chorus. At Woldingham she threw herself into theatre. She became the student head of the drama department, performed in plays and musicals, ran workshops for younger pupils and helped put on productions.

  Her parents did not share her enthusiasm. They disapproved of her acting ambitions and hoped she would go to university, as her brother had. At seventeen she applied to three London drama schools instead of the universities expected of her. None of them invited her to attend.

  In her final year at Woldingham, the screenwriter Julian Fellowes gave a lecture at the school about the making of the film Gosford Park. Mulligan spoke with him briefly afterwards and asked for advice on an acting career. Fellowes tried to dissuade her and suggested she "marry a lawyer" instead. She answered with a letter, insisting she was serious and that acting was her purpose in life.

  Several weeks later, Fellowes's wife Emma invited her to a dinner for young aspiring actors. There she was introduced to a casting assistant, and that introduction led to an audition for Pride & Prejudice. She auditioned three times before she was given the role of Kitty Bennet. Between acting jobs in her late teens and early twenties, she worked as a pub barmaid and ran errands for Ealing Studios.

  348915

• 3. Dickens, Austen and Chekhov

  ›

  In 2004, Mulligan made her stage debut at the Royal Court Theatre in London, in Kevin Elyot's play Forty Winks. The next year came her film debut, in Joe Wright's adaptation of the Jane Austen novel, where she worked alongside Keira Knightley. Later in 2005 she won the part of the orphan Ada Clare in the BBC's award-winning adaptation of Charles Dickens's Bleak House. It was her first television role. In 2006 she appeared opposite Jane Horrocks in BBC One's The Amazing Mrs Pritchard.

  The year 2007 was crowded. She appeared in My Boy Jack, starring Daniel Radcliffe, and in Northanger Abbey, another Austen adaptation, starring Felicity Jones. She also took part in the Doctor Who episode "Blink". That performance won her the Constellation Award for Best Female Performance in a 2007 Science Fiction Television Episode.

  She finished the year in an acclaimed stage revival of Chekhov's The Seagull, playing Nina alongside Kristin Scott Thomas and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The Guardian called her performance "quite extraordinarily radiant and frank." Midway through the production she needed an appendectomy, which kept her off the stage for a week.

  Her Broadway debut arrived in 2008, in the American transfer of the same play. It earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination, but the prize went to Angela Lansbury for Blithe Spirit.

  1617192022

• 4. The Breakthrough

  ›

  Mulligan was 24 when she was cast in her first leading role, as Jenny in the 2009 independent film An Education. Jenny is a teenage schoolgirl who is seduced by an older man. The Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig directed, working from a script by Nick Hornby. More than a hundred actresses auditioned, and Mulligan's audition impressed Scherfig the most.

  Reviews were rapturous. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly and Todd McCarthy of Variety both likened her to Audrey Hepburn. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called her work a "sensational, starmaking performance." She won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She also received nominations for the Academy Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award, the Golden Globe and the Critics Choice Award. The British public, who vote for the BAFTA Rising Star Award, nominated her too.

  In 2010 she was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. That same year she starred opposite Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield in Never Let Me Go, the film version of Kazuo Ishiguro's acclaimed novel. The performance won her a British Independent Award.

  She also appeared in Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, her first major studio project. It screened out of competition at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Later in 2010 she sang on the Belle & Sebastian song "Write About Love."

  Two more films followed in 2011, and both were festival hits. Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and co-starring Ryan Gosling, debuted at Cannes. It collected four BAFTA nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and Mulligan was nominated in the supporting actress category. Shame, Steve McQueen's drama about sex addiction, debuted at the Venice Film Festival.

  In Shame she played Sissy, the neurotic and unstable sister of the addict played by Michael Fassbender. The role brought her a BIFA nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Todd McCarthy, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, said: "Exposing herself emotionally and physically as she never has before, Mulligan is terrific in this unexpected role of a deeply wounded and troubled soul."

  2526273039

• 5. Gatsby and Llewyn Davis

  ›

  One November evening, at a Vogue fashion dinner in New York City, Catherine Martin leaned in with news. Martin, the wife of the director Baz Luhrmann, told Mulligan that she had won the part of Daisy Buchanan. Mulligan had auditioned in late 2010. Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, with Leonardo DiCaprio opposite her, was released in May 2013. It remains the highest-grossing film of her career.

  In May 2012 she served as co-chair, alongside Anna Wintour, of the Met Ball Gala. The theme that year was Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations.

  In 2013 she also appeared in Inside Llewyn Davis, a black comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen. Oscar Isaac and Justin Timberlake co-starred. She played a folk singer opposite Timberlake. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews, and Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described the pair's performance as "outstanding."

  4042434484

• 6. Nights on Stage

  ›

  From the 13th of May to the 3rd of July 2011, Mulligan played the central character in Through a Glass, Darkly, an Atlantic Theater Company adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's work, staged off Broadway. Her character was a mentally unstable woman. Ben Brantley of The New York Times called the performance "acting of the highest order" and described her as "extraordinary" and "one of the finest actresses of her generation." She was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play.

  In 2014 she took on David Hare's Skylight in a London revival at Wyndham's Theatre in the West End. Bill Nighy and Matthew Beard shared the stage, and Stephen Daldry directed. The production won the 2014 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Revival of the Year and was nominated for the 2014 Olivier Award for Best Revival.

  In April 2015 it transferred to Broadway, at the John Golden Theatre, for a run of 13 weeks. Marilyn Stasio of Variety wrote that the two central performances left the audience breathless. The play won the Tony Award for Best Revival, and Mulligan earned her first Tony nomination, for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.

  Her later stage work was a solo show. Girls and Boys, written by Dennis Kelly and directed by Lyndsey Turner, played off Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre. The New York Times called her performance "perfection." She was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance.

  3536454749

• 7. Roles With Weight

  ›

  Anne Thompson of IndieWire wrote in 2015 that Mulligan's work in Far from the Madding Crowd "proves that she can carry a movie." Thomas Vinterberg directed the adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel, with Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom Sturridge and Michael Sheen in the cast. That autumn she starred in Sarah Gavron's Suffragette, alongside Helena Bonham Carter, Ben Whishaw, Brendan Gleeson and Meryl Streep. Justin Chang of Variety called her "a standout."

  In 2017 she starred in Mudbound, a Netflix film directed by Dee Rees. It holds a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and earned four Academy Award nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay for Rees. In 2018 she starred opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Wildlife, Paul Dano's debut as a director. Dano and Zoe Kazan wrote it, adapting Richard Ford's novel. It debuted at the 71st Cannes Film Festival and holds a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Mulligan was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead.

  Between films she returned to television in Collateral, a BBC Two limited series in which she played a Detective Inspector. She praised its creator, Sir David Hare, for working her pregnancy smoothly into the script.

  In 2020 came Emerald Fennell's black comedy thriller Promising Young Woman, with Bo Burnham and Alison Brie. Mulligan also served as an executive producer. It debuted at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim and holds a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed its release to the 25th of December 2020. She received her second Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and won the Critics' Choice Movie Award. At the 36th Independent Spirit Awards she won Best Female Lead and dedicated the prize to the late Helen McCrory.

  In 2021 she replaced Nicole Kidman in The Dig. The film is about the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo, and Ralph Fiennes and Lily James co-starred. It had a limited release in the United Kingdom and then streamed on Netflix. Her only release in 2022 was She Said, based on the non-fiction book of the same name. She played Megan Twohey, one of the New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The role brought a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

  In 2023 she played Felicia Montealegre in Maestro, Bradley Cooper's biopic about Montealegre and her husband, Leonard Bernstein, played by Cooper himself. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called her performance "heartbreaking." It brought her third Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She also took a small part in Fennell's second feature, Saltburn, where Variety deemed her a "scene-stealer."

  The science fiction adaptation Spaceman of Bohemia, co-starring Adam Sandler, premiered at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival for Netflix. It received mostly mixed reviews. The Ballad of Wallis Island, a British comedy based on the short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island, premiered at Sundance on the 25th of January 2025 and drew acclaim.

  More is on the way. She has a voice role in Laika's stop motion feature Wildwood and stars in the second season of Netflix's anthology series Beef, with Oscar Isaac, Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton. In May 2025 she joined Greta Gerwig's Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, based on the sixth novel in the series.

  5456576066

• 8. Beyond the Screen

  ›

  Marcus Mumford, lead singer of Mumford & Sons, was once simply a childhood pen pal. The two lost touch, then reconnected as adults. A few weeks after both finished work on Inside Llewyn Davis, they married, on the 21st of April 2012. They have three children. Before that, from 2009 to 2010, Mulligan dated Shia LaBeouf, her co-star in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

  In 2010 she joined other actresses in the Safe Project, a series raising awareness of sex trafficking. Each woman was photographed in the place where she feels safest. She also donated the Vionnet gown she wore to the 2010 BAFTAs to the Curiosity Shop, which sells donations to raise money for charity.

  She became an ambassador for the Alzheimer's Society in 2012, aiming to raise awareness and research funding for Alzheimer's and dementia. The cause is personal. Her grandmother lived with the disease for the last 17 years of her life and no longer recognised her. In 2012 Mulligan helped host and took part in the Alzheimer's Society Memory Walk. In 2013 she ran the Nike Run to the Beat half-marathon in London as a sponsored runner for the charity.

  In 2014 she became an ambassador for War Child and visited the Democratic Republic of Congo in that role.

  Her honours run alongside this work. Besides the BAFTA and the Critics' Choice Movie Award, she has been nominated for three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, five Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Tony Award. In the 2025 New Year Honours she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama.

  8283878894