In the past decade, young and talented British actors have gained a bigger visibility than ever before. And the latest one hoping to make her mark is actress Carey Mulligan.
Mulligan has slowly gained visibility in films such as Pride And Prejudice and Public Enemies and received rave acclaim for her appearance on an episode of the latest incarnation of BBC’s Doctor Who. Her latest film is the drama An Education, which premiered to critical acclaim at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
In the film, Carey plays Jenny, a teenager aspiring to go to the prestigious University of Oxford, but becomes smitten with the much older David, played by Peter Saarsgaard. We asked her whether she herself had any regrets about her own undergraduate educational experience.
“I didn’t get into drama school. I did try,” Mulligan says, with a laugh, “I’m sorry! I would’ve love to have done it. We drove past Juilliard earlier, and I still went. I would’ve loved to, but I didn’t, so I had to find another way in. So I ended you finding another way. But I think, ‘To each his own’ for that sort of thing. I think some people hugely benefit from going and some people don’t.”
“I would’ve loved to have gone, because it would’ve given me more confidence to do things onstage,” she continues, “And I’d feel a little bit more qualified sometimes. But I kind of spent time, since I’ve started, watching people around me and how they do it, and figuring out how I want to work by watching other people work. I’ve been lucky with people who’ve been really generous as well. I haven’t just watched them; they’ve kind of helped me.
The 24 year-old Mulligan shared with us how she got the part of 17 year-old Jenny.
“I‘d always played younger parts of myself,” she says, “That was my age bracket. They saw lots and lot of girls. I’d done fairly big things on TV. It was an audition process. I went in three times.”
“It was an advantage for me,” Carey continues, “I can look younger and have a few years more of experience than the girls who actually are that age. But sometimes it’s brilliant when they are the age that they are. Katie Jarvis in Fish Tank is unbelievable, and she actually was that age; she played her own age. I just go on occasion and steal those parts.
Mulligan also talks about how she herself has handled the film’s rather risqué subject matter of a romance with a minor.
“It really varies from city to city, because I’ve been to Australia with it and in New York City,” Carey says, “We’ve shown in Telluride and Toronto and Germany. It just varies wherever you go. I don’t think he is portrayed as a sexual person and certainly not as a predator. Director Lone [Scherfig] stressed this all the way through the film: Jenny should be the one who drives that side of the relationship. If you watch, you’ll notice that she leans in for the first kiss, she wants to wait to lose her virginity to David until she’s 17.”
“That means she would give everything to him, because they’re going to be together,” she adds, “In Paris, when we’re sting on the island and there’s the sunset behind us, Lone had me stroke his back. She’s constantly driving that side of things. He presents her with a banana before. He’d do anything not to. And I think there’s just an endearing quality to him, in that he’s just never been comfortable in a room in his life. He’s just trying to find a room where he feels at home. I think he finds that in that house.”
As previously mentioned, co-starring with Carey as David is Peter Saarsgard, who previously worked with the actress on the Broadway play The Seagull. Mulligan shared with us her working relationship with the actor.
“We did An Education first,” she points out, “It’s always nice going into a job with a friend. Also, we had two weeks to rehearse "The Seagull," and we hadn’t done it in 18 months. So Peter had to come in and take over the role and put on a British accent again. It was great.”
“We’ve become so close,” Mulligan continues, “He feels like a brother to me now. But also, I think Peter taught me a lot when we were working in the first place. I was probably much more of a nervous actor before I worked with him. In fact, on this film in general, I was around a lot of actors like that who helped me. I was much more scared of being a bad actress or doing something stupid …
We wondered if Mulligan had her own life-changing experience as a teen the way her character Jenny does throughout the course of An Education.
“I didn’t,” Carey says, “But in a way, Julian Fellowes was the way I ended up getting into acting. He was sort of my route in after I didn’t get into drama school. And I met him when I was 17. But I didn’t have a boyfriend until I was 19. I was nowhere near as mature as Jenny was when I was her age. When I applied to drama school, I used up quite a few spaces in my university application, which gives less university places. And I lied about it, and I didn’t tell my parents. I spent about 10 months lying, saying I had applied to all these universities, and I hadn’t heard anything yet.”
“I was making up false trips to Leeds,” she adds, “‘Oh, I’m going to Leeds for the day.’ And I’d go to London, because I had them believe I was still on this university thing. It was a little bit like Jenny. But then I got found out. And now, in England, when you apply to university, you can have it online. The data comes in faster over whether you have or haven’t got a place. At one point, my lies got all confused, and my mum just said, ‘I’m just going to go online.’ And I said, ‘Go for it,’ And I literally went downstairs, went out the front door and just walked and just didn’t come back for about three hours, because I knew I was busted. That was just one of those horrible, horrible things where your parents are disappointed in you. So that happened to me when I was 17.
One co-star Carey says she was delighted to work with was Emma Thompson, who plays the story’s headmistress.
“I’ve held her up quite high since I was 10,” Mulligan claims, “We shot everything in one day. You just walk into a room with someone like that and you just know you don’t want to be the weak link. It was exciting and nerve-racking, which was probably useful for most of it. And she’s so completely normal. She knew the first names of everyone in the crew by 11:00AM. And there’s a scene where she’s writing stuff,” she continues, “She takes her work very seriously, but she was writing these things as she was talking to me and delivering these lines. It was so cool.”
“And then every time she handed over the pieces of paper, the prop guys were breaking down,” she continues, “And it was because she was writing really obscene things on every piece of paper, like really dirty. Like I never read them, but it was awesome. It was the best day. It was one of my favorite days of the whole shoot. We ran over at the end of the day, because we had to shoot these in one day, and she ordered pizza for the crew, wine, beer. And she was there for a day! You usually do that when you’re there for the whole shoot. She’s just lovely. She’s proper class.”
Mulligan shared with us the challenge of trying to keep the character consistently developed during the filming process.
“Some of the stuff that was out of sequence was beneficial, in a way, because we shot everything with Danny and Helen in the first two weeks,” she says, “So in the first two weeks when I was genuinely excited and genuinely having fun and enjoying being on a film set. I was psyched. In a way, that thing works.”
“I owe that all to Lone [Scherfig], really,’ Carey adds, “I played it scene by scene, what had happened to my character before and after, and everything else was just sort of molded by Lone. I made choices and she would adapt them to make sure I was telling the arc of the story. I wasn’t responsible for it, which is I didn’t feel this pressure. I just tried to play each scene as truthfully as I thought it should be, and she adapted it. She took that weight, which was so brilliant about it.
Carey discussed whether or not her career has changed from the considerable buzz she has gotten from her role in An Education.
“My career has probably changed, and that’s what’s been wonderful,” she believes, “From Sundance to people seeing, even on copies on DVD, it’s been great. It’s been great, because it’s been like a mini-audition. I’ve spent the last five years not being enough of a name to even get into a room to meet the person deciding who will get the job…so it’s nice when it gets slightly easier.”
“There are parts that you know you do, but you have no access to them, because they go through a list of ten actresses before they even consider auditions,” Mulligan continues, “But I’ve been really lucky. I’ve always worked steadily. I hope that I would’ve worked anyway after Sundance, even if the film had not been sold. I’ve gotten cool opportunities.”
However she doesn’t let the notions of Oscar buzz, which also has been brimming, affect her.
“Before Sundance, I’d never been to a film festival,” Carey says, “I’d never played the lead in a film. I actually thought it wouldn’t get bought. And when it did, that was pretty much all I could ask for. If it means more people will see the film, then I think it’s a brilliant, positive thing. I can’t describe how strange it is to hear Oscar talk. That’s why I bleep it out.”
Carey is certainly rising up the ranks in Hollywood, particularly with an upcoming role as Gordon Gekko’s daughter Winnie in the highly-anticipated Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, helmed by famed and controversial director Oliver Stone who directed its predecessor. We wondered about her experience with working with actor Michael Douglas, who reprises his Oscar-winning role as Donnie Darko.
“I’ve had very little to do with Michael so far,” Mulligan replies, “We’ve rehearsed a little bit for a few days. I haven’t shot a scene with him yet. I hope that it will be lovely. He’s lovely. He’s really lovely. But all my stuff is being saved for last, so I can concentrate on another film.”
Already, her appearance in the film has sparked rumors of a relationship with co-star Shia LeBeouf, who plays Winnie’s fiancé Jacob in the film. However, Mulligan says she’s had little trouble with the tabloid press.
“I’ve got no complaints.” Carey states, “I haven’t really dealt with the British press. I’d never really done publicity for work, before this film. We haven’t done much press in England yet. The movie comes out a couple of weeks later. So I’ve never been in the tabloids in England, so I don’t have any experience with them.”
