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Top 10 Facts about Carey Mulligan 

Carey Mulligan is a British actress who is best known for playing strong-willed heroines. Within the film interest, she is greatly respected and acclaimed for her seemingly effortless ability to inhabit an eclectic variety of characters on screen and stage. 

Mulligan has enjoyed a successful career for 16 plus years, with her first professional acting debut on stage in Kevin Elyot’s play Forty Winks (2004) at the Royal Court Theatre as a narcoleptic teen. The following year, she made her film debut in Joe Wright’s 2005 film adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Pride & Prejudice, portraying Kitty Bennet. 

Following this she continued portraying diverse roles in television and her breakthrough role came in 2009 when she was cast in her first leading role as Jenny in a 1960s coming-of-age drama film An Education directed by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig and written by Nick Hornby. 

Below, we put together a list of the top 10 facts about Carey Mulligan; 

1. She grew up in Germany and England

Mulligan at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival – Wikipedia

Mulligan was born on 28 May 1985 in Westminster, London to Nano Mulligan, a university lecturer and Stephen Mulligan, an executive in a hotel conglomerate. Her parents met while they were both working in a hotel in their twenties. Mulligan has an older brother named Owain Patrick Mulligan. 

When she was three years, her family moved to D眉sseldorf, Germany after her father landed a job as a manager at a hotel there. She and her brother attended the International School of D眉sseldorf. 

The move did not have any negative impact on the child as Mulligan explains, 鈥渢hey spoke German, played in the laundry rooms, lost guinea pigs behind radiators, and ate Wiener schnitzel from room service.鈥�  

At the age of 8, her family moved back to England. She enrolled in Woldingham School in Surrey to complete her secondary education. 

2. She fell in love with acting at a young age 

Carey Mulligan with Peter Sarsgaar. 2009 – Wikipedia

Her interest in acting sparked while still in Germany after watching her brother perform in a school production of The King and I when she was six. Her family went to observe the rehearsal and this when a young Mulligan pleaded with the teachers to let her be in the play. They let her join the chorus. In the word of Mulligan, 鈥淚 think I stamped my feet a little bit, and they let me in.鈥� 

She soon after became involved in the school鈥檚 theater program. Even after moving back to England, her passion persisted on. At Woldingham School, she was the student head of the drama department. She performed in plays and musicals, conducted workshops with younger students, and helped put on productions. 

During her finally year at the school met actor/screenwriter Julian Fellowes when he delivered a lecture at the school on the production of the film Gosford Park. 

3. Her parents disapproved of her acting career 

Carey Mulligan during Q&A following the screening of An Education at the Ryerson Theatre – Wikipedia

Mulligan’s parents objected of her acting ambitions and wished for her to attend a university like her brother. This is understandable as most parents wish for stability within their children鈥檚 lives and a career in acting is a high-risk endeavor. 

At 16, Mulligan attended a production of Henry V starring Kenneth Branagh. His performance emboldened her and reinforced her belief that she wanted to pursue a career in acting. In her desperation, 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.” 

This rejuvenated her desire to pursue acting and against her parent鈥檚 wishes Mulligan, at age 17, applied to three London drama schools instead of the universities she was expected to apply to, but was not invited to attend them. 

4. Some discouraging advice from a role model

Julian Fellowes, 2014 – Wikipedia

A recent popular saying encourages people not to meet their role models, since the majority of the time they tend to disappoint us. They do not usually live up to our expectations, which is usually disheartening. This is what happened to Mulligan.  

 After Julian Fellowes鈥� lecture, Mulligan briefly talked to him and asked him for advice on her an acting career. Fellowes tried to dissuade her from the profession and suggested she “marry a lawyer” instead. Despite the disheartening advice, Mulligan wanted Fellows to know she was dedicated and passionate about acting, thus she sent him a letter in which she stated she was serious about acting and that it was her purpose in life.  

 Fortunately, this moved helped Mulligan greatly because several weeks later, Fellowes’s wife Emma invited Mulligan to a dinner she and her husband were hosting for young aspiring actors. 

5. Feels like a butterfly effect

The Great Gatsby Premiere Sydney, Australia 2013 – Wikimedia Commons

Mulligan mentioned in an interview at the Sundance Film Festival that the first actor she met was Julian Fellowes, who came to talk at her school. She approached him, and he introduced her to casting director Jina Jay鈥檚 assistant.  

Mulligan was introduced to the casting director assistant during the dinner hosted by Fellowes and his wife. This introduction facilitated her auditioning for a role in Pride and Prejudice; at the time, they were looking for young, unknown actresses to play the younger sisters. She auditioned three times, and was eventually given the role of Kitty Bennet 

Thanks to a simple letter, Mulligan wrote Fellowes describing her sheer dedication to acting, she was able to get her first job. From then on she has continued to enjoy prominence within the film industry.

Everything about this just screams butterfly effect!  

6. An epic love story 

Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons, 2018 – Wikipedia

Mulligan and Marcus mumford, the lead singer of Mumford & Sons, love story feels like something from a telenovela. A soulmate you mate as a child, you lose contact with each other and then years later you find each other; this is the plot of many award-winning telenovelas. 

The pair first became acquainted with each other at a Christian holiday camp when Mulligan was 12 years old. After the camp, the two would send each other letters through their churches. However, over time the letters stopped coming, and the two lost contact.  

Many years later, they reunited in Nashville, Tennessee, at a secret Mumford & Sons show that Carey attended with Jake Gyllenhaal. Several days later the pair attended a secret Arcade Fire show in New York City and since then everything fell into place leading to their marriage. 

Mulligan got married to Marcus on 21 April 2012 on a farm in Somerset, England. They have two children together, daughter Evelyn Grace (born September 15, 2015) and son Wilfred (born August 2017).  

7. Mulligan Oscar nominations  

Oscar with a clapperboard on the background – Unsplash

The Oscar Awards is considered to be the most prestigious awards ceremony in Hollywood. Winning an Oscar is a career changing move for any actor, since it makes you more desirable to directors and movie studios. An Oscar nomination is also life changing since once the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces the nominees everybody’s eyes are fixed on you. Mulligan has had two Oscar nominations so far. 

For her performance in the 2009 film An Education, a film about a young schoolgirl named Jenny (Mulligan), who is seduced by a charming con man (Peter Sarsgaard), garnered her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.  

Mulligan鈥檚 2020 dark comedy tragedy thriller film Promising Young Woman made history at the 93rd Academy Awards, scoring five Oscars nominations: picture, editing and actress. It won Best Original Screenplay.  

For her performance, Mulligan鈥檚 garnered widespread critical acclaim. She received her second Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and won the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Actress, among many other honors.

8. Her other achievements 

Mulligan attending the premiere of Wildlife at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival – Wikipedia

Mulligan has yet to bag an Oscar, with her implacable acting skill it will definitely happen, but she has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award and a Critics’ Choice Movie Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award. 

In addition to acting, she also has a great singing voice. In 2010, she featured in indie-pop group Belle and Sebastian鈥檚 album Belle and Sebastian Write About Love, performing the title track. She also sang Theme from New York, New York for the soundtrack of Shame (2011), Five Hundred Miles with Justin Timberlake and Stark Sands for the soundtrack of Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and Let No Man Steal Your Thyme with Michael Sheen for the soundtrack of 鈥楩ar from the Madding Crowd鈥� (2015). 

9. An ambassador for the Alzheimer鈥檚 Society

Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad meeting actress Carey Mulligan, 2018 – Wikimedia Commons

Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia that affects memory, thinking and behavior. Symptoms eventually grow severe enough to interfere with daily tasks. Currently, there is no cure for the illness, but there is medication that can temporarily reduce the symptoms. In the USA, approximately 1 in 3 seniors dies with Alzheimer’s or another dementia. 

Mulligan has been an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society since 2012. She herself has experience the effects of the disease, as her grandmother lived with Alzheimer’s disease for the final 17 years of her life, during which she no longer recognized Mulligan. 

According to Mulligan, she became the ambassador of the Alzheimer’s Society with the goal of raising awareness and research funding for Alzheimer’s and dementia. 

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. 

10. Her grandfather was a WWII veteran 

HMS Indefatigable, The Royal Navy in the First World War – Wikipedia

In My Grandparents’ War (2019), Mulligan explored Denzil Booth’s, her maternal grandfather, role as naval radar artillery officer aboard the HMS Indefatigable at the Battle of Okinawa and then sailing into Tokyo Bay at the end of World War II. 

Booth trained as a radar gunnery officer before joining HMS Indefatigable in 1944, where he led a small team that was responsible for calculating the exact position of incoming enemy aircraft via the radar screen. The aircraft carrier was the first British ship to be hit by a Japanese kamikaze pilot. Several crew members died, fortunately Booth survived the attack as he stood 30ft from the Kamikaze and the ship itself remained in service. 

After the war Booth returned to Swansea University to train as a schoolteacher, married in 1950 and he and his wife spent the rest of their lives in Wales. He died when Mukkigan was just five years old.