This button nosed beauty has quickly made a name for herself in acting circles around the world. Following her big break as Kitty Bennett in 2005’s Pride and Prejudice, the young actress has bagged many more acting roles and awards along the way. Where is Carey Mulligan headed off to next? Well, read on and find out...
Classic Star fashionista
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“My generation tends to play it cool these days. But there is no room for cool. You have got to be irritating and desperate, and if you are not it is terribly boring”
C
arey Hannah Mulligan was born on 28th May 1985 to parents Stephen and Nano. Though she was born in Westminster, London, she moved to Germany at the age of three with her family. Her father had been hired to manage the European
chain of InterContinental Hotels. A shy child, Carey admits that her childhood was spent living in very expensive hotels. She was quite a tomboy till the age of fifteen, and caught the acting bug after watching her brother act in The King and I, a high school production. Says Carey, “He (Her brother) was on stage and I was watching. And I started crying
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fashionista because I was too young to be in it, and they said, Okay, fine, you can do it because you’re Owain’s younger sister.’ And they put me in it. And from then on, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do”. The actress admits that though she has loved acting for a long time, she was never actually ‘cool enough’ in the true sense of the word. Carey says “When I was 11, I went to a disco wearing a shiny purple shirt with green flares and silver wedge shoes. I wasn’t cool, and I’m still not”. She admits though that being cool is not all it is cracked out to be, “My generation tends to play it cool these days. But there is no room for cool. You have got to be irritating and desperate, and if you are not it is terribly boring”. Yet, no one in their right mind would call Carey irritating and desperate. The young woman takes her roles seriously and makes sure she can relate to the characters she is playing or the script she is acting out in one sense or the other. After her debut as Kitty Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, Carey starred in BBC’s Bleak House (2005), The Amazing Mrs Pritchard (2006), TV series, My Boy Jack (2007) and Northanger Abbey (2007). She also made her Broadway debut with The Seagull in 2007 and her performance was much appreciated by theatre critics. Carey loved performing on stage saying “The time I spent doing The Seagull was everything to me. It was like falling in love with life”. She hopes to act in one theatre production per year from now on. In 2009, Carey starred in An Education and picked up many awards for her breakthrough performance as the role of Jenny in the film. She won a BAFTA Award
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for Best Actress in a Leading Role and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and an Academy Award for Best Actress. Her role as Jenny is considered by critics to her ‘big break’. Whilst the young actress is on the fast track to becoming a serious young actress, this was not always the case. Firstly, Carey’s parents were against her pursuing an acting career, “My parents were completely against it. They wanted me to go to a university. They didn’t know any actors; no one in my family was an actor. They were scared.” Carey herself ‘secretly’ applied to three drama schools before being cast as Kitty Bennett and was rejected by all three. When she had been at boarding she had thrown herself into the school drama department whole heartedly, “I had wanted to act for a really long time, but other schools I had been to did not have such good drama departments. Everyone was so encouraging. You could do anything you wanted to, although you had to take it seriously. If you missed rehearsals, you were out.” Though she acted in amateur plays at school, she did not have much exposure to the professional acting world; “the only actor I had ever met in my life was Julian Fellowes, who came to do a talk at my school. I wrote to my headmistress explaining that I didn’t want to go to university and wanted to get in touch with him. I knew it was a bit of a long shot, but I was desperate”. The long shot paid off. Julian Fellowes introduced her to a casting agent and to cut a long long story short; she was cast as Kitty Bennett. At the time, Carey was working at a pub; “I was on the train going to work when I got the call saying I had the part. I had to go and
Upcoming films include Wall
Street: Money Never Sleeps
in which she plays a supporting role alongside another young rising star Shea LaBeouf. The two have been dating since August 2009.
work at the pub that evening - I was doing my work with a massive grin on my face”. The actress has had much to grin about since then. She is all set to appear in several more movies being released during 2010. Upcoming films include Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps in which she plays a supporting role alongside another young rising star Shea LaBeouf. The two have been dating since August 2009. Her cropped pixie haircut and button nose make her an adorable addition breath to the Hollywood star circle. Carey has simplicity of style and an old school elegance that reminds us of Audrey Hepburn. Her kooky sense of style has been garnering just as much attention as her burgeoning acting career of late. Her sense of fashion is both unique and inspired. She rocks the red carpet in prints, floral mini dresses and sixties style dresses as well as in ‘stop-I-am-agoddess’ evening gowns by Nina Ricci. The young actress is also not scared to try out the lesser known designers to make an impression. Her keyed down style, highlighted by her close cropped hair and almost no accessories ensures that she is the epitome of cool at every event. Whether in bold red or light turquoise, the coquettish beauty always makes an impact. We can’t help but ask now... are Carey and Shea the future Brad and Jen? Perhaps. But at the moment, the young Englishwoman is having too much fun realising her dreams to really be bothered by things like that. Is she headed for stardom? I think we can safely say...yes!
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