This winter, she will be seen as Felicia Montealegre, Costa Rican actress and wife of Leonard Bernstein in Teacher Bradley Cooper's film, available from December 20th on Netflix. But for the past fifteen years, Carey Mulligan has carved out a unique place for herself in American cinema.
We sometimes forget that Carey Mulligan is British. She was indeed seen as a resident of 1960s Greenwich Village in Inside Llewyn Davis the Coen brothers (2013), as a star journalist New York Times in she said by Maria Schrader (2022), as a young mother from Montana in Wildlife by Paul Dano (2018), or of course in the role of the irresistible socialist Daisy Buchanan of Long Island in the The Great Gatsby by Baz Luhrmann (2013).
Yet it was in London that Carey Mulligan, daughter of a Liverpool hotel manager and a Welsh academic, grew up. And it was in the most British way possible that she took her first steps in cinema: in 2005, she landed a small role in the adaptation of thePride and Prejudice Jane Austen's film directed by Joe Wright, alongside Keira Knightley and another newcomer, Talulah Riley. All three were twenty years old at the time.
Like Keira Knightley – whom she would meet again five years later on the set of Never Let Me Go —, Carey Mulligan makes her first appearances on set in costume, in My Boy Jack (2007) by Brian Kirk, starring Daniel Radcliffe – a new adaptation of Jane Austen – then in the Public Enemies by Michael Mann the same year. But it is in the role of a London teenager manipulated by an older man in An education It was in Lone Scherfig's film that the general public discovered the young actress's full talent. Her subtle portrayal of a complex and fragile character, her first major role, earned her a shower of awards, including the BAFTA for Best Actress. But, above all, thanks to the American co-production, the film was celebrated across the Atlantic. Carey Mulligan even received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, just five years after leaving her job as a barmaid in a West London pub – she would be nominated for an Oscar again in 2020. Promising Young Woman by Emerald Fennell.
Then, it's the usual fairy tale: Hollywood rolls out the red carpet. However, the actress, who honed her skills in theater before film, stays away from blockbusters and their glitz. Instead, she gravitates towards independent cinema and becomes a regular at the Cannes Film Festival, walking the red carpet for Wall Street: Money never sleeps by Oliver Stone or Drive by Nicolas Winding Refn. Twelve years after having walked the Venice Film Festival for shame by Steve McQueen, she returned last September to the Venice Film Festival with Teacher by Bradley Cooper. A film in keeping with Carey Mulligan's filmography, demanding yet accessible, coming soon. Meanwhile, we await her alongside Adam Sandler as an astronaut's wife in the intriguing... spaceman by Johan Renck, still on Netflix sometime in 2024.
Teacher Bradley Cooper
December 20, 2023 on Netflix