Born: Carey Hannah Mulligan
Date of Birth: 28 May 1985
Birth Place: Westminster, London, England, UK
Height: 5′ 7″ (1,7 m)
Carey Mulligan is a British actress, born May 28, 1985, in Westminster, London, England, to Nano (Booth), a university lecturer, and Stephen Mulligan, a hotel manager. Her father is of Irish descent and her mother is Welsh, originally from Llandeilo.
Her first major appearance was playing Kitty Bennet in Ask ve gurur (2005) alongside Keira Knightley, Judi Dench and Donald Sutherland. Carey also played orphan “Ada Clare” in the B.B.C. television series, Bleak House (2005).
Carey has said that her passion and love for acting was first kindled at her old school Woldingham School, where she took part in a school production of “Sweet Charity” in her final year, and where she was also a student head of drama.
In 2004, at the age of 19, Mulligan began her acting career on stage in the play Forty Winks at the Royal Court Theatre in London. She made her film debut the following year in Pride & Prejudice, the 2005 film adaptation of the Jane Austen novel, portraying Kitty Bennet. Later that year, she auditioned for and won the role of orphan Ada Clare in the BAFTA award-winning BBC adaption of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, her television debut.
Among her 2007 projects were My Boy Jack, starring Daniel Radcliffe, that features her in a supporting role, and Northanger Abbey. Mulligan identified with her role Elsie, the daughter of writer Rudyard Kipling, who vociferously opposes her brother going to war. She earned a Constellation Award for playing the main character Sally Sparrow in the Doctor Who episode “Blink”. She rounded out 2007 by appearing in an acclaimed revival of The Seagull, in which she played Nina to Kristin Scott Thomas’s Arkadina and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Trigorin.
The Daily Telegraph said her performance was “quite extraordinarily radiating'” and The Observer called her “almost unbearably affecting.” While in the middle of the production, she had to have an appendectomy, preventing her from being able to perform for a week. 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.
Her big breakthrough came when, at 22, 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. The film and Mulligan’s performance received rave reviews, and she was nominated for an Academy Award, Screen Actors Guild, Golden Globe, and won a BAFTA Award.
Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly and Todd McCarthy of Variety both compared her performance to that of Audrey Hepburn. Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers described her as having given a “sensational, starmaking performance,” while Claudia Puig of USA Today felt that Mulligan had one of the year’s best performances, and Toby Young of The Times felt she anchored the film. Writing in The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw concluded that she gave a “wonderful performance.” Mulligan was a recipient of the Shooting Stars Award from the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival[32] and received a BAFTA Rising Star Award nomination, which is voted on by the British public.
Mulligan next starred in independent film The Greatest (2009) as the pregnant girlfriend of a boy who dies. Her involvement with the project helped it “tremendously”, according to the director. After being selected to join The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, she won a British Independent Award for Never Let Me Go, an adaption of the 2005 Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, in which she starred and narrated. It was released in September 2010, competing against her other project, the Oliver Stone-directed film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Screened out of competition at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, it was her first major studio project. Later that year she also provided vocals for the song “Write About Love” by Belle & Sebastian.
Mulligan returned to the stage in the Atlantic Theater Company’s off-Broadway play adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass, Darkly, from 13 May – 3 July 2011. Mulligan played the central character, a mentally unstable woman, and received glowing praise from reviewers.[40] Ben Brantley, theater critic for The New York Times, wrote that Mulligan’s performance was “acting of the highest order”; he also described her as “extraordinary” and “one of the finest actresses of her generation.”
Mulligan co-starred in the critically acclaimed 2011 neo-noir thriller Drive, directed by Danish filmmaker Nicholas Winding Refn. She was nominated for her second BAFTA award—Best Supporting Actress—for the film. Drive garnered a total of 4 BAFTA award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Mulligan began filming Steve McQueen’s sex-addiction drama Shame alongside Michael Fassbender in New York in January 2011. Drive debuted at 2011 Cannes Film Festival and Shame debuted at 2011 Venice Film Festival, both to good reviews. Of her performance in Shame, Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers wrote, “Mulligan is in every way sensational.”
She starred as Daisy Buchanan, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, in The Great Gatsby, which was released in May 2013. Mulligan auditioned for the role of Daisy in late 2010. While attending a Vogue fashion dinner in New York City in November, Baz Luhrmann’s wife, Catherine Martin, told her she had the part. In May 2012, Mulligan was a co-chair alongside Anna Wintour for the Gatsby-themed 2012 Met Ball Gala.
Carey Mulligan stars in the film adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel Far from the Madding Crowd with Tom Sturridge, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Michael Sheen for director Thomas Vinterberg and Fox Searchlight.
Mulligan starred in the June 2014 revival of the play Skylight with Bill Nighy and Matthew Beard, directed by Stephen Daldry, at Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End. It won the 2014 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Revival of the Year and was nominated for the 2014 Olivier Award for Best Revival Mulligan returned to Broadway when Skylight transferred in April 2015. Her performance as Kyra Hollis was received with critical acclaim and she has received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.
She stars in Suffragette for director Sarah Gavron and screenwriter Abi Morgan, to be released October 2015.
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