Carey Mulligan
She wowed us in An Education and was wooed by the coolest directors in Hollywood. Still opting for character pieces over blockbusters, Carey Mulligan is back with her most mature role yet in Wildlife. Total Film meets the Brit kicking up a quiet storm.
I felt like every set I walked onto I was a bit of a fraud. I was always waiting for someone to catch me out
Time waits for no-one. Not even Carey Mulligan. “I’ve certainly had moments when I’ve heard a song that I listened to a lot and it makes your heart skip a beat,” she muses. “It makes you panic that you’ll never be 21 again.” The shocking thing is that when Total Film first met Mulligan, now 33, it was almost a decade ago, when she originally seized our attention as the British rising star feted for her performance in 2009’s An Education.
Playing the 1960s schoolgirl who takes up with Peter Sarsgaard’s older man, it was the kind of breakthrough part that most actors can only dream of. Nominations at the Oscars and Golden Globes followed, as did a Bafta win for Best Actress (pipping the likes of Meryl Streep and Saoirse Ronan). Hollywood wasted little time in pouncing, and Mulligan soon found herself cast as the eco-warrior girlfriend to Shia LaBeouf’s trader in Oliver Stone’s belated Wall Street sequel Money Never Sleeps.
Since then, it’s been an enviable decade for Mulligan, as she gravitated towards auteur filmmakers such as Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive), Steve McQueen (Shame), the Coen brothers (Inside Llewyn Davis) and Baz Luhrmann (The Great Gatsby). Wisely, she didn’t just spend her life going from set to set; in 2012 she married musician Marcus Mumford, with whom she’s had two children, Evelyn, three, and Wilfred, one.
When we meet again, it is early doors at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and her new movie Wildlife has just opened Critic’s Week. Sauntering over with a Coke in her hand on a hotel rooftop terrace, Mulligan is sporting a navy dress with white flower print and black mules. On her wrist is a tattoo of a seagull – a reminder of her 2008 Broadway run in the celebrated Anton Chekhov play. In person, she’s what you might call quietly determined; willing to stand her ground.
Directed by the actor Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood), who is making his debut behind the camera, Wildlife is an acutely observed family drama that’s been adapted from the book by Richard Ford. The story sends Mulligan back to the 1960s and the era of An Education, albeit this time in small-town Montana. She plays Jeanette Brinson, a mother-of-one (married to Jake Gyllenhaal’s oft-absent firefighter Jerry) who has gradually seen her life ambitions erode. “She has been reduced in her mind to just being a mother and a wife,” says Mulligan.
If the film says a great deal about gender politics, marriage and the changing nature of women’s roles in society, it’s a world away from Mulligan’s own comfortable upbringing. Born in Westminster, she spent her early years in Germany – due to her father’s work in the hotel trade – before returning to England where she was enrolled in a boarding school in Surrey.
While she had already been acting in plays, the dream truly became a reality when Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes visited her school. Afterwards, she wrote him a letter and he responded by inviting her to lunch, and then introducing her to a casting agent. That led to Joe Wright’s 2005 film Pride & Prejudice, and an unstoppable decade in film, theatre and television. Time has truly marched on. “That’s it,” she laughs. “I’m retiring!” Not just yet, Carey…
What kind of expectations did you have coming into Wildlife? Paul Dano is an experienced actor but it’s his first time in the director’s chair…
I’ve known Paul for a long time. We were friends. I did a play with [Dano’s partner] Zoe Kazan [The Seagull] when we were 21. We’ve known each other since then; I’ve always wanted to work with him. He’s one of my acting heroes. So watching him on screen has always been so inspiring. I kind of just knew he would make a good film. He has such good sensibilities and his taste is so good and the work that he chooses to do, and what he does on screen, is so honest and good, I imagined that he would take all those skills and transfer them to directing, which he did. But in terms of the way he handled the set, that was really extraordinary. Making an independent film, as you know, is really hard – a very limited time and budget. All of those things are things the director has to think about, and are the kinds of things that can rattle a first-time filmmaker. I saw none of that in Paul. He was so calm and so assured all the way through.
What did he say to help you become believable as Jeanette?
We had so many conversations. And we had rehearsals. I think the great thing with Paul, he was able to identify the moments where I was a little bit too afraid to do the versions I wanted to do, and he would nudge me in the right direction towards that. In a lot of the film, she’s a little bit out of control and that was the hardest stuff to shoot. You have to lose your inhibitions and I’m very British! That takes a minute to get there but he was really good at saying, “I see where you wanna go. Mark it up. Do whatever. It doesn’t matter.” And then I felt free to make an idiot of myself.
The film deals with pressures that married women faced in the late ’50s, early ’60s. Do you see any improvement in contemporary society?
Not much! [laughs] No, I think all the same pressures still exist, but I think they were a little bit more acceptable back then. The constraints on women were the status quo. Now people can make slightly different choices, but I think the pressures are still there, whether you’re a stay-at-home mum or working mum, to be everything, to do everything. I think that’s what she’s reacting against.
I think the taboo around marriages dissolving and divorcing was far greater then, but in every other respect it’s pretty similar to today, in terms of what we expect from women. Part of the façade of that perfect ’50s family… when you see the cracks forming, you start to see what’s going on beneath the surface, and there was a presentational thing about women, where they had to look a certain way.
We still expect a lot from women in that sense but the ’50s was such a specific time in terms of how women were meant to look, how they were meant to present their home. That was your currency – how you could make yourself look to the world.
Music is key in the film. Did you listen to a lot of sounds of the era to prepare?
I had little mixes of music when we were filming. I sometimes listen to music on set… like if we’re going into a difficult scene, I’ll block out the noise of the crew and everyone getting their stuff ready. I always listen to music from the period when I’m preparing anything. I listened to ’40s, ’50s music for Mudbound and listened to so much ’60s music when I did An Education. But my preparation for jobs has changed as well since I had kids, because I have way less time! I used to spend months reading books and printing off things and sticking them in a book. I felt like it was my way of arming myself for the job. If I could do enough research, I felt like I could do it. Now I’m lucky if I can remember the words before I get on the set!
So do you crave still being able to do that much research for roles? That sort of extensive prep work must have really helped when you started acting…
I think it did. I think it made me feel like I was qualified to be there when I was very unqualified. I felt like every set I walked onto I was a bit of a fraud. I was always waiting for someone to catch me out. So that stuff made me feel like I’ve done my homework and now I know what I’m doing. And it is useful. I wish I had more time [to still do as much now], but I don’t. I have to be more efficient with it now.
So, on set now, you don’t feel like you’re a fraud any more?
I totally do! The first couple of days [on a new project], I feel like I can’t remember how to act and everyone thinks I’m bad at my job. You can ask Paul about the first day of filming on this. He’ll be nice about it, but it wasn’t great. I had it on Suffragette. I remember filming… it was me and Anne-Marie Duff and we were filming a scene. I was gripping her hand and saying, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do with my face!” And there’s a scene in Never Let Me Go where I spend the entire scene like that [looking downwards] and Keira [Knightley] and Andrew [Garfield]
i realised that roles for women aren’t written that well
are in it, and it looks like an acting choice, but I’m doing it because I’m so selfconscious! I just couldn’t allow myself to be on camera because I was doing so badly. I was like, “Fuck it, she’s just going to look at the floor.” So I looked at the floor for the whole time!
How comfortable are you with seeing yourself on screen? Is it something that you’ve got used to?
It’s horrible! The worst! I can see all the mistakes. I can see all the moments where I’m like, “I should have done that!” If you can sit and watch yourself and think, “I nailed it,” then you probably shouldn’t be doing it any more. You’re meant to be trying to be better. It’s such a strange experience. It’s like when you hear your voice on an answering machine. It’s horrible. It’s like being confronted with your own voice.
What was it that first sparked your interest in acting? Was there a defining moment you can remember?
We were at the International School of Düsseldorf, and my brother was doing a school production of The King And I and we went to go pick him up from rehearsals. This story makes me sound like a precious brat! He was on stage and I was watching. And I started crying because I was too young to be in it, and they said, “OK, 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.
You famously wrote to Julian Fellowes after he visited your school. Even before that, however, you’d penned a missive to Kenneth Branagh after seeing him in
What did he say?
Henry V.
These letters will haunt me forever! I wrote that I thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. Well, this is a summary. “Kenneth, you are the best thing since sliced bread. How do I be like you? Essentially, can I come and watch you be you?” Then I said, “My parents don’t necessarily want me to be an actor. I can’t really imagine doing anything else. What do I do?” And I sent that off and he said, “You should only do it if you can’t think of another way to live your life or you can’t bear the idea of doing anything else. It’s not a case of wanting to or not, it’s a case of having to.”
You made your debut in Joe Wright’s
Pride & Prejudice, in 2005. Were you able to wrap your head around who you were working with right off the bat?
I remember being 13 years old, and I had this really vivid dream that I was doing a film with Judi Dench. You know when you wake up from a dream that you thought was real and you’re gutted that you woke up because it was so good? And then my first job [was Pride & Prejudice]. I had a very, very small part [as Kitty Bennet], but Judi Dench was in it, and I was mind-blown that I was even in a room with her. So it is strange when that happens.
After that, you were in Chekhov’s
The Seagull on Broadway. You once said that you were so in love with your character Nina that every time you’ve looked for a new role, you were looking for Nina. Is that true?
Yeah, I think so. I think what I meant by that… getting to play Nina was both a blessing and a curse. It was such a good role. And then I realised as I worked more that roles for women aren’t written that well. So I’d experienced the very best writing for women and I couldn’t find any more of it. In retrospect, more what I meant was that I was trying to find roles that had that complexity and interest for me, and that was challenging, so I was looking for Nina in the sense that I was looking for other characters that were as fulfilling, and that’s what I’ve spent the last 10 years trying to find, like Jeanette [in Wildlife], that are real representations of women.
Beyond female representations on screen, do you feel movements like #metoo and #TimesUp have brought about concrete change in the industry?
Yeah, I think so! There are concrete things that will be quite hard to reverse now. That’s the most important thing going forward. That this conversation turns into actual measures. There are things put in place to prevent people being taken advantage of or abused. So I think that means a code of conduct, putting down concrete measures when you come into a workplace. But I think that’s a change already. I think the pay disparity is one. Probably since the Michelle Williams Mark Wahlberg thing [when the co-stars were paid vastly different sums for reshoots
i remember being 13 and dreaming of doing a film with judi dench
of All The Money In The World after Kevin Spacey was recast], I think it will be really hard… maybe I’m naïve but I would hope that will put an end to the pay disparity.
You followed The Seagull with An
Education, and became the toast of the 2009-10 awards season. Was it a worry attending all those ceremonies so early in your career?
Constantly. What do you say? And I screwed up so badly at the Baftas when I won. I wasn’t expecting to win. And I got up there and forgot to thank the director – for which I should be shot. You want to win. Of course you do. But you equally do not. Because it’s the scariest thing and you’re never prepared. Someone said to Colin Firth at the Oscar lunch [when he was up for The King’s Speech], “How do you feel?” And he said, “Ask me in six months.” I think that’s true. When you’re in the middle of it, you’ve no idea what you think about any of it.
It led to a really frenzied period for you – films such as Brothers, The Greatest and Michael Mann’s Public Enemies. How did you find that?
Oh, mad. I got on the plane [after finishing An Education], and went to Chicago for Michael Mann, and there were 300 extras! All dressed in ’30s gear. Fifty actual vehicles. Catering tents. The food in America is so much better than it is in England! It was mad… I got out there and Michael did not want me to wear a wig, because he hates wigs. So he asked me to dye it [peroxide white] and you don’t say no to Michael Mann.
You probably couldn’t say no to Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas either for
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Was that an intimidating experience?
They all terrified me. I just pretended not to be terrified. Oliver has this reputation… so I was nervous. I thought, “I don’t want him to mess with me. If I go in and pretend to be strong and not nervous and not afraid, he won’t be able to treat me like a girl.” So I went in, trying to be like a boy, and he treated me like one of the boys. He didn’t give me special treatment because I was the only girl. He was just very honest with me, as he is with everyone. And that’s his best quality as a director. He’ll come up and say, “I don’t know what that was. That was really bad. Do it again.” And I’ve never worked with someone who is quite so direct. Lone Scherfig on An Education was blunt but sweet-blunt. But Oliver is like tack-blunt.
What do you remember about working with Baz Luhrmann on
The Great Gatsby? The first time I ever met Baz Luhrmann, I was at the after-party for An Education in London, and it was at the hotel that he was staying at. About halfway through… Baz came over and introduced himself and said, “Your party has woken me up!” And I said, “I’m so sorry!” [He asked how I was] and I said, “Well, it’s pretty overwhelming and scary.” And he said, “Well, you see, these things are like weddings and you’re the bride and your job really is to make everybody else feel good and have a good time. And it’s not really about you having a good time.” I was like, “Huh – that’s pretty interesting.” So then that was a useful ethos.
What was it like jumping into Luhrmann’s world on set?
The scale of it was huge in comparison to all the films I’ve done. But it starts out very small at the beginning of the day. There’s crew working all the time because they have to because it’s a huge set – but it starts out with actors in the scene and Baz just sitting down and talking, often talking for an hour or two hours every day before we start work. And then, as the day progresses, it gets progressively more… well, there’s a spirit of adventure, and then when he wants it to be, it can get frenzied. The party scenes that he directs, he directs through a megaphone. So the parties look so wild because he’s the one who is riling them up and everyone has such a good time.
You managed to also lever in some very cool indies – Nicolas Winding Refn’s
Drive and Steve McQueen’s Shame. How did they come about?
I saw [Winding Refn’s] Bronson and I saw Valhalla Rising, and I hadn’t worked for about a year after Wall Street, and I emailed my agent saying, “If Nicolas Winding Refn does anything ever again, I’d love to meet him and get an audition to try and be in it.” And two weeks after that he said he’d just got a script in from Nicolas that was going round, and I could get a meeting with him. So I went in to meet him. And Steve McQueen… I’d seen Hunger, and I also really wanted to work Michael Fassbender…
Likewise, you also got to add the Coen brothers onto your CV with Inside
Llewyn Davis…
Yeah. I flew from Sydney [after The Great Gatsby] directly to New York to do it, so it was a bit jarring, but it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. They were so
brilliant. I only did two weeks on it – it’s a supporting part. But I loved working with them. And you can see why every actor who ever works with them speaks so highly of them; they’re just so wonderful and so easy and cool.
Did you have to learn a lot about folk music for that role?
No! It was one film where I didn’t have a huge amount of time to prepare for it. I kinda freestyled it on that one!
More recently, you’ve ventured into television, from working on the Netflix feature Mudbound to TV drama Collateral. What was the appeal?
Increasingly, there are more opportunities in TV for women. I don’t think the film industry has quite caught up with that yet. You see tonnes of really cool roles for women on TV and less so for film. Maybe that will change now with everything that’s out there. I hope so. Also, the idea of getting to play a character over a longer period of time is really appealing. A lot of the time you’re getting a hundred minutes to play with, so four hours, eight hours to tell a story gives you so much more. You can build such a richer character I think, and I think people really enjoy that. I hadn’t done TV for a really long time but what I loved about Collateral, the more you played that part, the more nuance you can find in it. With film… we shot Mudbound in 28 days, and Wildlife wasn’t much longer than that and sometimes it feels like it’s over before it started and you haven’t really got comfortable in it. TV is fun in that sense. You get way more time to play around.
How was the experience of playing a tough cop in
Collateral?
It was really fun! I loved it! It was also nice to do something when I was pregnant. I worked through my first pregnancy as well. I did a play. And it’s nice not to just sit around! I loved it. I loved getting to do a contemporary piece. I loved working with David Hare again, because we did Skylight together. S.J. Clarkson is such a good director. I had so much fun with her. We made a rule before we started shooting, and it was David’s rule – “You’re not going to cry in this! There’s no crying allowed!” So we were all, “Yes, there’s no crying allowed! One, two, three – high five!” And we didn’t cry and it was great and I loved it. I remember my mum saying to me before I started filming, “When are the really difficult scenes?” I was so happy because there weren’t any. And it was great – it was challenging in different ways and I loved the actors that I worked with. There was no emotional breakdown. So it was really a fun thing to do. I think sometimes I’ve been nervous of letting myself do things that are really fun.
Was playing a character like Collateral’s
DI Kip Glaspie something that you had wanted to do for a long time?
I think so. I’ve leaned towards drama, I’ve always done drama. But I liked playing someone who [has] a real competency in her job and a confidence; she was someone who knew what she was doing with her life and had a direction and wasn’t really struggling with anything.
the coens are brilliant. they’re so easy and cool
What’s been the biggest change for you since your career started and you’ve got yourself established?
I was always lucky to be able to take time off between work and only work on the things that I really wanted to. But more so now, I’ll only work if it’s really worth being away from my kids… it has to be perfect for me to want to leave them.
WILDLIFE OPENS ON 9 NOVEMBER.