Enforced breaks from the industry are nothing new for Carey Mulligan. The two children she's had with Mumford & Sons lead singer Marcus produced two career breaks that most actresses would fear could be terminal.
Yet Mulligan has always ridden straight back into relevance, and on her own terms too. She admits she loves working and the process of being artistic and creative, though she doesn't crave it in the way that some others in the spotlight do.
And while she's had a string of box office blockbusters from The Great Gatsby to Far from the Madding Crowd, Wall Street 2 to Public Enemies, she's just as happy working with small-budget and independent films that provide escapism and ambition in an industry that continues to find its feet again, not just in the aftermath of lockdown, but also by way of the threat from the small screen and premium channels.
With her Oscar nomination for her role as Cassie Thomas in the critically acclaimed black comedy psychological thriller Promising Young Woman, at 36, Mulligan clearly has her best years still ahead of her, and her kids' progression out of toddler ages (and all the necessities that come with it), mean she has embarked on a relative spree of projects over the past couple of years, with She Said, Spaceman, Maestro, and Fingernails all slated for release in 2022.
While she's always keen to promote her next movie or TV project, what's endearing about the London-born Brit is her ability to chat and meander through topics on most subjects. It may not please the agents and publicists who linger just out of shot, but it makes for a much more honest and earthy conversation with someone who truly embodies the more sanitized version of acting.
Sure, she will campaign for equality and diversity and throw her weight behind countless other projects of the heart. Still, her best qualities are humility and honesty, and she has them in abundance.
STRIPLV: In Promising Young Woman, many people have talked about the styling of the movie and the approach to an extremely sensitive subject. MULLIGAN: There was a real energy in the film. In many places it had a girly, bright, almost Cameron Diaz Something About Mary-quality to it. Yet, when you peel away that surface layer, you discover there is something much more sinister underneath. Not only is there a real story of someone coming to terms with what happened to them, but there's an additional conversation being had about empowerment, abuse. I think it was a really important movie to make, and to shape it in a revenge saga actually puts a positive spin on a subject that, of course, is almost always extremely damaging. STRIPLV: Is Promising Young Woman a good example of originality in Hollywood that so many people feel is missing? MULLIGAN: I actually think there's plenty of originality in Hollywood, but we are in an era where it's not necessarily those movies that gain the column inches. I've always been very calm about that fact. I think as an actor; you lead a series of very simple choices about whether you want to explore big projects or do something more meaningful and arty. I think we all know which movies make the most money and get the most coverage, but that doesn't mean there's not very original and ground-breaking stuff going on as well. STRIPLV: Has the Oscar nomination changed you? MULLIGAN: No. Perhaps an actor win might have done. (Laughs) STRIPLV: But it meant a lot to you. MULLIGAN: Oh, of course. It's recognition. It's the one thing that unites all actors above and beyond everything else. Recognition, it's an appreciation of what you have done well; but more than that, it's validation that you haven't done something badly. Most actors are quite insecure deep down, and I know a few would prefer just not to fail, rather than be absolutely driven and determined to succeed. It's a strange conflict, and I think over time, you become a lot more positioned towards the latter, not failing. When you don't win, you can go again. When you fail, you may find the road is blocked. STRIPLV: Are you surprised that it took 12 years to earn another Academy Award nomination? MULLIGAN: It's not something I was thinking about in those 12 years. To be honest, it didn't really seem like 12 years. If you were to ask me if I regretted my movie choices during that time and the fact I didn't achieve any nominations in that period, I would say, "Je ne regrette rien." Firstly, I am so pleased with, wrong word, "proud of" everything I have done, but more than that, I think when you obsess over your own fortunes, you diminish the efforts of others. I don't see a single nominee who doesn't deserve to be up there, so by that logic, I am happy for them. STRIPLV: Your upcoming movie She Said (the story of Harvey Weinstein's fall from grace in which she plays Megan Twohey, one of the whistleblowers from the New York Times) seems very appropriate for the moment. MULLIGAN: I think it's a story that was going to get told. There's a beautiful full-circle irony that it's being told in cinematic form. It's a film that, like Promising Young Woman, gets to the heart of what goes on and tries to paint a picture of arresting injustices. We're not trying to change the world, but we are striving for fairness and for people ensuring they pay for their errors. STRIPLV: Some will say your recent movies are banging the drum for feminism. MULLIGAN: Well, what is a feminist? For me, a feminist is someone who believes that all people should be treated equally and that men and women should have the same rights and be held accountable in the same way. I actually don't know many men who would disagree with that, so this isn't really as ground-breaking as it sounds. That said, it's sad that in the present day and age that we should still have to fight to make this a reality. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go. I know some men are even shocked that women are identifying themselves as feminists as if women have achieved equality and there are no battles left to be fought. STRIPLV: You do like to portray strong-willed women? MULLIGAN: I do. Across Far from the Madding Crowd, Inside Llewyn Davis, and certainly Suffragette, I've really been thrilled to go down this route. In Suffragette, I especially think playing Bathsheba was a very important role for me. She is a modern woman with great ambitions and a powerful personality. She refuses to conform to the limitations that the Victorian era and a male-dominated world imposed on her. She is authentic, truthful, and she also has the ability to learn from experience and evolve in the course of her life. She, and those around her, were really the start point for everything we see now. STRIPLV: With so many people looking on in the portrayal of this Harvey Weinstein story, did you feel extra pressure to do the role justice? MULLIGAN: I think the pressure is only one of those things that happen in the lead-up. Once you're on set, once you're with the crew, once you have the character clear in your head and the lines right, you go into overdrive, and the greater story actually sits on a different tangent. What you end up acting out is the story that's right in front of you as it has been scripted and planned; it's not an exact replication of real events. You could never get that close to be able to do that. So the only pressure really is to do justice to the version you have in front of you. STRIPLV: What kind of characters interest you? MULLIGAN: The ones I take on. I really don't mind, though as time has gone on, I've definitely pursued those with a slightly harder edge. I love the opportunity to play mean, resentful, and unkind women because, normally, I'm cast in much more kind-hearted roles. For many years I never played someone who was so far removed from my own nature. It is a turn-on for me to be able to be so brutally frank and mean sometimes. STRIPLV: People speak about how accepting and kind you are on set. Who has been most like that back to you? MULLIGAN: Probably Justin Timberlake, in Inside Llewyn Davis. Justin was lovely. Such a kind soul and gentleman. He's a great actor as well as a very gifted and naturally talented musician. He can do anything. Justin also has this very charming nature which makes it so enjoyable to be on the set with him. On a similar note, I also think Oscar Isaac did an incredible job as Llewyn despite the fact that I spent so much time in the film tormenting him. STRIPLV: Who inspires you away from film? MULLIGAN: I'm a big Joni Mitchell fan. I still remember when I was 18, and I couldn't stop crying while listening to her album Blue. It was Rosamund Pike who introduced me to Joni Mitchell while we were shooting Pride & Prejudice together. Every morning when we would drive to the set, she would put on CDs of Joni Mitchell and Johnny Cash, and I was hooked on their music, although Mitchell resonates more deeply with me and my melancholy side. STRIPLV: You knew from a young age that acting was your destiny in life, didn't you? MULLIGAN: Acting has been my obsession for as long as I can remember. It was all pretty clear to me when I saw my older brother perform in The King and I in Düsseldorf, where my father was managing a hotel called The Intercontinental. I was six at the time, and I can still recall being transported by the experience of it and wanting to be part of it. For many years afterward, I kept begging my parents to send me to theater school, but they wanted me to get a proper education instead. STRIPLV: Why were they so against acting? MULLIGAN: They wanted me to get a university degree in case something went horribly wrong. They were scared for me. But I thought if I went to university, I would spend three years doing something I didn't care about, or I'd drop out, and that would have been even worse because I'd have wasted everyone's time and money. It's hard when you're 18 to decide to do something exclusively for three years. A lot of my friends did it, and they did it for the university experience, so maybe I missed out on that, but there was nothing else I could do. Acting was it. I was very angry at them for being so against it, but we just had no example of anyone in our life who was in that kind of world. My parents ran hotels, and my brother was very academic and went to Oxford. STRIPLV: Was it fun getting to live in hotels during your youth? MULLIGAN: I suppose it was quite exotic, but my brother and I weren't allowed to run wild in the hotel, and we were expected to behave properly and keep our rooms tidy. We were friendly with the maids and the hotel staff, and we felt like we were part of the team. The best part was eating wiener schnitzel from room service. STRIPLV: So, how did you finally get your start as an actress? MULLIGAN: I waited until I finished school, and instead of applying to university as my parents expected me to, I applied to all the top drama schools in London. Every single one rejected me, and I was crushed. All my auditions went horribly wrong. So I went to work nights as a barmaid at a pub. That experience gave me the chance to observe and study all the strange characters who came to the pub, especially some of the older men who wanted to pick me up even though I looked like I was 12. (Laughs) STRIPLV: So, how did you finally get your start in the business? MULLIGAN: While I was attending boarding school, Julian Fellowes came to speak at the school about the making of Gosford Park. Since he was the only person I had ever met who was in the business and I decided to write him a letter asking for advice, and he and his wife invited me out for dinner and arranged a meeting with a casting agent, Maggie Lunn. She was able to get me an audition for Pride & Prejudice, and a few months later, I was on the set with Keira Knightley, Rosamund Pike, and Judi Dench, with whom I had always dreamed of working. There I was. I couldn't believe my luck. STRIPLV: You've said that getting older is helping you find more interesting roles. You're also wearing your hair longer again. MULLIGAN: Yes. When I started out, I was often playing women much younger than me because I had this very young face. But now, the roles are definitely improving, and I have many more possibilities. STRIPLV: You and your husband Marcus Mumford choose to live in the English countryside? Are you more comfortable away from city life? MULLIGAN: It's very relaxing to spend time in the countryside, but we haven't spent that much time there lately because I'm often shooting in different places. I do have a fondness for nature because half my family is Welsh, and I spent a lot of time in the countryside as a young girl. I even milked a cow once when I was seven on my great aunt's farm. We have a farm, but we are not farmers, though. It's just that we enjoy the peace and beauty of living in the countryside. STRIPLV: Would you ever consider performing on stage with your husband and with Mumford and Sons? MULLIGAN: I've been asked that many times and my answer is the same: Never. Even when I was preparing to sing in those films, I didn't even want to ask him to help me. I would rather watch other people sing on X Factor. STRIPLV: You've taken breaks from acting but always come back. MULLIGAN: It's not a pattern I plan on faithfully following, but if it happens like that, then so be it. I generally find that after about a year, it feels like enough time not to work, then I need to start again. That's all largely down also to not being much around I wanted to work on. I think, you know, I don't want to be rubbish and overworked and irritated and overworked. I love the films I'm doing, but it pays to stop and look around. STRIPLV: So, what's your decision-making process built around? MULLIGAN: It's always going to be based on the character and the director. That's all that matters. STRIPLV: Do you prefer the indie scene or the big Hollywood movies? MULLIGAN: I don't differentiate like that. There's something about the pace of an independent film I like. No time, no money, I like that. Waiting around a lot of big productions for set pieces to be set up, I like less. Whatever I do, I'm beyond my expectations and dreams. People have been really kind and generous. And I have motherhood to fall back on. That's the thing that defines and becomes your life. It's undeniable. It changes everything. I don't know if it's always the first thought on my mind when I read a script, but I would suspect it's altered my attitude. It's unavoidable. STRIPLV: You've said in previous interviews that you've changed your approach to emotional acting over the years. Could you elaborate on that? MULLIGAN: When I was starting out in films, I used to imagine the most horrible things in order to bring myself to tears or put myself in a very tortured emotional state for certain scenes that required that intensity. The worst example of that was when I was shooting Pride and Prejudice, and I spent most of my day on the set crying. I would imagine things like my mother's funeral and other terrible things in order to prepare myself, and it was simply awful. But working in the theater in recent times has led me to completely change my approach. I realized I would go mad if I had to keep working myself into an overwrought state every day for six days a week. So I trained myself to focus more on the lines and on the character's state of mind rather than trying to adapt my own emotional state to that of the character. STRIPLV: Does this make acting less stressful? MULLIGAN: It's much less stressful now. It's much easier to work that way and, in the end, I think your performance is better because you have more control and you're less exhausted and neurotic. I'm trying to import this kind of technique to my film performances because you need to be much more adaptable because you shoot these very short sequences, and you have to be able to do it over and over again in different takes and different camera angles and close-ups and so forth. STRIPLV: Do you watch your films? MULLIGAN: I do, but I find watching myself quite difficult. I've seen An Education five or six times out of necessity, and I've seen Wall Street a few times because there have been screenings I've gone to where I can't disappear because people would think I was rude. They would be the two I've watched the most. Some of the others I don't care to see again. Some actors feel like it helps them, and they can correct things if they watch, but it just messes with me. Especially if I watch playback on set, like a director would be like, "Come and watch this so you can know what to do in terms of where to move." and I'm like, "Just tell me because if I watch it, I become really self-aware and that messes with me." So I don't really watch my own work more than I have to. STRIPLV: Do you find theatre (she most recently starred on Broadway in Girls & Boys) a very different experience from acting in films? MULLIGAN: What I love about theatre is that if you feel like your last performance hasn't been up to your liking, you can fix your mistakes on a nightly basis, whereas if you watch a film that you've played in, you have to live with your mistakes and you cringe if you see a scene where you feel you could have done it better. STRIPLV: But you make mistakes on stage too. MULLIGAN: Yes, but they only last for one night. I particularly enjoyed doing The Seagull in New York a few years ago, where for the first time, I thought I did a very good job on stage. However, one particular night I had a very tough time, and when I went backstage after the play was over, I sat down in my dressing room and felt horrible. Then someone came over and told me that Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes were in the audience and were coming backstage to meet the cast. I immediately got changed and took a taxi back to my hotel and was crying all the way because I was so ashamed that I hadn't done my best work and couldn't bring myself to meet two people I admire very much. STRIPLV: What do you prefer, New York or London? MULLIGAN: New York is a very stimulating environment to live in. I love the fact you can walk through all these amazing neighborhoods, and each section of the city is a small world onto itself. In LA, you have to drive everywhere, and no one walks anywhere, and everything is so spread out. I also enjoy the way New Yorkers are so lively and culturally sophisticated, and you can strike up conversations with people and feel this sense of community. You can't do that in London – if you do, people think you are weird.