Carey Mulligan
Carey Hannah Mulligan (born 28 May 1985) is an English actress. She has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award.
Carey Mulligan
28 May 1985
Actress
2004–present
3
Mulligan made her professional acting debut on stage in Kevin Elyot's play Forty Winks (2004) at the Royal Court Theatre. She made her film debut with a supporting role in Joe Wright's romantic drama Pride & Prejudice (2005), followed by diverse roles in television, including the drama series Bleak House (2005), the television film Northanger Abbey (2007), and a guest appearance in the Doctor Who episode "Blink" (2007). She made her Broadway debut in the revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull (2008). Mulligan's breakthrough role came as a 1960s schoolgirl in the coming-of-age film An Education (2009), for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Mulligan continued gaining praise for her performances in Never Let Me Go (2010), Drive (2011), Shame (2011), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), Suffragette (2015), Mudbound (2017), Wildlife (2018), and She Said (2022), and had her highest-grossing release in the period drama The Great Gatsby (2013). For her performance in the Broadway revival of David Hare's Skylight (2015), she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She received further Academy Award nominations for her portrayals of a vigilante in the black comedy Promising Young Woman (2020) and Felicia Montealegre in the biopic Maestro (2023).
Mulligan has been an ambassador for the Alzheimer's Society since 2012, and an ambassador for War Child since 2014. She has been married to singer-songwriter Marcus Mumford since 2012. They have three children.
Early life and education[edit]
Carey Hannah Mulligan[1] was born on 28 May 1985 in London,[2] to Nano (née Booth) and Stephen Mulligan. Her father, a hotel manager, is of Irish descent and is originally from Liverpool.[3] Her mother, a university lecturer, is from Llandeilo, Wales.[4][3][5][6] Her parents met while they were both working in a hotel in their twenties. In the television series My Grandparents' War (2019), Mulligan explored her maternal grandfather Denzil Booth's role as naval radar artillery officer on HMS Indefatigable at the Battle of Okinawa and then sailing into Tokyo Bay at the end of World War II.[7]
When Mulligan was three, her father's work as a hotel manager took the family to West Germany. While living there, she and her brother attended the International School of Düsseldorf.[8] When she was eight, she and her family moved back to the UK. As a teenager, she was educated at Woldingham School, an independent school in Surrey.[9]
Her interest in acting sparked from watching her brother perform in a school production of The King and I when she was six. During rehearsals, she pleaded with his teachers to let her be in the play. They let her join the chorus.[10] While enrolled in Woldingham School as a teen, she was heavily involved in theatre. She was the student head of the drama department there, performing in plays and musicals, conducting workshops with younger students, and helping put on productions.[11][12]
When she was 16, she attended a production starring Kenneth Branagh. His performance emboldened her and reinforced her belief that she wanted to pursue a career in acting. She wrote a letter to Branagh asking him for advice. "I explained that my parents didn't want me to act, but that I felt it was my vocation in life," she said. Branagh's sister replied: "Kenneth says that if you feel such a strong need to be an actress, you must be an actress."[10]
Mulligan's parents disapproved of her acting ambitions and wished for her to attend a university like her brother. At age 17, she applied to three London drama schools instead of the universities she was expected to apply to, but was not invited to attend them.[10] During her final year at Woldingham School, actor/screenwriter Julian Fellowes delivered a lecture at the school on the production of the film Gosford Park. Mulligan briefly talked to him after the lecture and asked him for advice on an acting career. Fellowes tried to dissuade her from the profession and suggested she "marry a lawyer" instead. Undeterred, she later sent Fellowes a letter in which she stated she was serious about acting and that it was her purpose in life.
Several weeks later, Fellowes's wife Emma invited Mulligan to a dinner she and her husband were hosting for young aspiring actors. It facilitated an introduction between Mulligan and a casting assistant that led to an audition for a role in Pride & Prejudice. She auditioned three times, and was eventually given the role of Kitty Bennet.[10][6][13][14] During her late teens and early twenties, she worked as a pub barmaid and an errand-runner for Ealing Studios between acting jobs.[13][15]
Career[edit]
2004–2008: Early work[edit]
In 2004, Mulligan made her stage debut in the play Forty Winks at the Royal Court Theatre in London.[16][17] She made her film debut the following year in Joe Wright's 2005 film adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Pride & Prejudice, portraying Kitty Bennet alongside Keira Knightley. Later that year, she won the role of orphan Ada Clare in the BAFTA award-winning BBC adaption of Charles Dickens' Bleak House, her television debut.[18]
Among her 2007 projects were My Boy Jack, starring Daniel Radcliffe, another Jane Austen adaptation, Northanger Abbey, starring Felicity Jones, and the Doctor Who episode "Blink", which won her the Constellation Award for Best Female Performance in a 2007 Science Fiction Television Episode.[19] She rounded out 2007 by appearing in an acclaimed stage revival of The Seagull, in which she played Nina alongside Kristin Scott Thomas and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The Guardian called her performance "quite extraordinarily radiant and frank."[20] While in the middle of the production, she had to have an appendectomy, preventing her from being able to perform for a week.[21] For her debut Broadway performance in the 2008 American transfer of The Seagull, she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, but lost to Angela Lansbury for Blithe Spirit.[22]
2009–2014: Breakthrough and rise to prominence[edit]
Her breakthrough came when, at 24, she was cast in her first leading role as Jenny in the 2009 independent film An Education, directed by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig and written by Nick Hornby. Over a hundred actresses auditioned for the part, but Mulligan's audition impressed Scherfig the most.[23][24] The film and her performance received rave reviews, and she was nominated for an Academy Award, Screen Actors Guild, Golden Globe, Critics Choice and won a BAFTA Award. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly and Todd McCarthy of Variety both compared her performance to that of Audrey Hepburn.[25][26] Rolling Stone's Peter Travers described her as having given a "sensational, starmaking performance,"[27] Mulligan received a nomination for the BAFTA Rising Star Award, which is voted on by the British public.[28]
Personal life[edit]
Mulligan dated Shia LaBeouf, who she co-starred with in the film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, from 2009 to 2010.[68]
In 2012, she married Marcus Mumford, the lead singer of Mumford & Sons. They were childhood pen pals who lost touch and reconnected as adults.[69][70] A few weeks after completing production on the film Inside Llewyn Davis, in which they were both involved, they married on 21 April 2012.[71]
They have three children.[72] Their first child, a daughter named Evelyn, was born in 2015.[73] Their second child, a son named Wilfred, was born in 2017.[74] In October 2023, it was reported that Mulligan had given birth to her third child.[75]
Philanthropy[edit]
Aside from acting, Mulligan was among the actresses who took part in the Safe Project—each was photographed in the place she feels safest—for a 2010 series to raise awareness of sex trafficking.[76] She donated the Vionnet gown she wore at the 2010 BAFTAs to the Curiosity Shop, which sells its donations to raise money for charity.[77]
Mulligan became the ambassador of the Alzheimer's Society in 2012, with the goal of raising awareness and research funding for Alzheimers and dementia. Her grandmother lived with Alzheimer's disease for the final 17 years of her life, during which she no longer recognised Mulligan.[78][79] She helped host and participated in the 2012 Alzheimer's Society Memory Walk and was one of the sponsored Alzheimer's Society runners in the 2013 Nike Run to the Beat half-marathon in London.[80][81]
In 2014, Mulligan became an ambassador for the charity War Child and visited the Democratic Republic of Congo in this role.[82][83]