Mara angry she is caught up in Oscar race row
Oscar-nominee Rooney Mara has been on the wrong side of the diversity debate – so will she go to the controversial ceremony?
Rooney Mara will attend the Oscars awards ceremony on Sunday despite her unhappiness at being dragged into the row over its lack of ethnic diversity. “I really hate that I am on that side of the whitewashing conversation,” said Mara, who is nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Carol.
It has been said before, and will undoubtedly be said again: Rooney Mara is no fan of interviews. Those attempting to chip away at the chilly front she has presented in the past have described her as “glacier-eyed”, “aloof ” and “impenetrable”. Given that I have limited time with her down a scratchy phone line, I am braced for the worst – yet pleasantly surprised by the buoyant mood the 30-year-old actress sounds to be in. To begin with.
Semi-fresh off a flight, Mara is sheltering indoors from a snowstorm in New York. She is a self-professed shy, guarded soul who steers clear of social media – you get the impression she might often prefer her own company to venturing on to crowded streets, snow or no snow. “I will have to take the dogs out after this,” she says, laughing ruefully.
The big, wide world is currently baying for more glimpses of Mara, who has been weathering her own maelstrom of publicity, interviews and turns on the red carpet of late.
Though Kate Winslet beat her to the Best Supporting Actress gong at the Baftas a fortnight ago, she may yet walk away with this week’s greater prize: an Oscar for her role in Carol, the sumptuous tale of two women who fall in love in New York in the Fifties, an era when the American Psychiatric Association deemed homosexuality a “sociopathic personality disturbance”.
Mara plays Therese Belivet, a gamine Audrey Hepburn-type who does a lot of staring and thinking. But still waters run deep, and hers is an unsettlingly bewitching performance, beautifully offsetting Cate Blanchett’s firecracker of a role, for which she, too, was Bafta and Oscar-nominated.
Though Mara cut a striking figure in her Givenchy gown at the Baftas, the obvious question is, will she even attend the 69th Academy Awards on Sunday? The event has been engulfed in a ferocious diversity row since an all-white line-up of nominees for best acting awards was announced in January, for the second year in a row.
So far, directors Spike Lee and Michael Moore, and actors Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, have all said they will be boycotting the ceremony. #OscarsSoWhite has been trending (again) on Twitter, with viewers threatening to tune out altogether, and British actor David Harewood, star of Homeland, joining calls for those who attend to do so in “black face”.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there,” says Mara, hesitantly, evidently unwilling to fully alight on such a hot topic. In this, she seems wiser than Charlotte Rampling, who caused a fresh furore (and, some suggested, scotched her chances of winning Best Actress for her role in 45 Years) by declaring the calls for diversity to be “racist to white people”.
But it would be unfair to imply Mara is maintaining a dignified silence in the hope it will prove as golden as an Oscar statuette.
“Here’s the thing: I have a lot to say and I have very strong opinions about it, but it is such a sensitive issue that I don’t want to reduce it to a sound bite,” she says of her refusal to be drawn further.
“I feel like that is what is happening. It is being turned into pullquotes and headlines, and that isn’t opening up a conversation so much as pointing fingers at people and taking their awards out of context. I don’t want to step into the conversation in that way.”
She has prior experience of such tricky conversations about Hollywood whitewashing. Last year, she was criticised for taking the role of Tiger Lily in Joe Wright’s Pan – the character is Native American in both JM Barrie’s 1911 novel Peter and Wendy, and Walt Disney’s 1953 animated film
Peter Pan. A petition to Warner Bros, objecting to her casting, garnered 96,000 signatures. It was, she admits, a “tricky thing to deal with. There were two different periods: right after I was initially cast, and the reaction to that, and then the reaction again when the film came out.
“I really hate, hate, hate that I am on that side of the whitewashing conversation. I really do. I don’t ever want to be on that side of it again. I can understand why people were upset and frustrated.”
Mara maintains that director Joe Wright’s intentions were “genuine” and insists she loved being part of the production. Still, she says: “Do I think all of the four main people in the film should have been white, with blond hair and blue eyes? No. I think there should have been some diversity somewhere.”
Speaking candidly is not something that comes naturally to the emerald-eyed brunette, whom you may (or may not) recognise as the fierce, pierced cyber-hacker Lisbeth Salander in the American film of
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), which earned her first Oscar nod, or the girlfriend who sassily dumped Mark Zuckerberg at the beginning of
The Social Network (2010). Nor do red carpets: “I don’t think it is ever something you look forward to. For me, it is an irritating part of the job. I try to make the most of it and have fun with it. But it is like this weird other thing. It has nothing to do with movies. It has become this thing unto itself.”
The relentless promotional tours, I suggest, must feel like a whole other job altogether. “Yes!” she enthuses. “When does that happen – that being an actor makes you a politician and sales person? I’m not good at either of those things. It’s not really what you sign up for. You have to learn how to be, not good at them exactly, but how to get through them.”
Much like interviews, it seems. As we swing to more personal matters, the shutters slowly but steadily close on her good mood. The facts, at least, are these. Born and raised in New York, the third of four children, Mara (full name, Patricia Rooney) was inspired by the Broadway musicals and classic movies such as
Gone with the Wind and Rebecca that her mother, Kathleen, took her to from an early age.
Her older sister, Kate Mara, is also an actress ( House of Cards, The
Martian and 127 Hours), whom she credits with encouraging her into the profession – although, no, they don’t practise lines together.
Keen to gain “life experience”, Mara went to George Washington University, before transferring to New York University to study social policy and psychology. “I wanted to learn about other things that interested me, because I wasn’t sure if acting would work out.”
She has a history of being both single-minded and level-headed, and at university founded a charity now known as Uweza Foundation, which aims to lift street children out of poverty in Kibera, Kenya.
Her family tree can be traced back to County Down, Ireland, and bears genuine sporting giants: her father’s side co-founded the American football team the New York Giants and her mother’s side the Pittsburgh Steelers. Mara does not relish being asked about it and again, no, she never imagined going down a sporting route.
Enquiring about her love life is even less fruitful; she audibly winces at questions about her boyfriend, director Charlie McDowell, and previous relationships that might have informed her portrayal of Therese in Carol. Her rebuttals are polite but firm – her voice gets quieter, her answers shorter.
Before the hatches can be completely battened down, I chance my arm and bring up
Poldark star Aidan Turner: last year they filmed The Secret
Scripture together in Ireland, the story of a woman who keeps a diary of her extended stay at a mental hospital. Surely she realises how pulse-racingly crazy we have gone for him, over here?
“Yes, I know all about it,” she says. “He is fantastic. When we shot the film, it was right before this obsession grew out of control. We didn’t have that much to do together, but I really enjoyed working with him. You can see why all the ladies love him.”
Obviously, I explain, it’s essential to know whether he took his top off during filming.
“No, he didn’t.” Dramatic pause. “He takes all his clothes off in this one.”
As she bursts into laughter, it seems – sadly – that she is finally joking.
‘The red carpet has nothing to do with movies. It’s become this thing unto itself ’