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You Should Know About… Carey Mulligan

Posted by Anneke Hak on 26/10/2009
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She’s being tipped for an Oscar for her performance in An Education and is already dating Hollywood’s hottest young thing, Shia LaBeouf. They're just two reasons you need to know about Carey Mulligan.

Carey Mulligan Carey Mulligan is setting Hollywood on fire right now. Forget the hot lips of Megan Fox or the blonde tresses of Cameron Diaz, Carey fits into an entirely different box, unashamedly unafraid to be different. Mulligan is tipped to pick up an Oscar next year, after garnering rave reviews for An Education at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The film created a good old-fashioned bidding war between producers and distributors, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a long while.

In the film, Mulligan plays the incredibly bright, but incredibly dreamy, Jenny, a 16-year-old student vying for a place studying English at Oxford. Until, that is, she meets the older David, who can give her the life she’s always dreamed of – and without having to go to Oxford to achieve it. Mulligan manages to pull the entire film off herself, carrying each scene effortlessly, with David Germaine from the Canadian Press describing Mulligan’s performance as “a star-making turn”. When I met Carey in a Knightsbridge hotel, she told me that she hadn’t even realised that she was the lead role in An Education until she noticed that she was on set a lot more than anybody else.

You may have seen Carey Mulligan playing Keira Knightley’s hysterically giddy sister Kitty in the film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice. The film was a turning point in Mulligan’s career. At just 19 years old she had been invited to dinner at writer Julian Fellowes’ house, where she met a production assistant looking to cast the Bennet family. It would be Carey’s first film role and she would appear alongside the likes of Knightley, Dame Judi Dench and Rosamund Pike.

Mulligan picked up a cult following after her performance in Pride And Prejudice, and as Sally Sparrow in the Doctor Who episode, Blink. From here she was approached to play Jenny in An Education and the doors to Hollywood have flung wide open for her. Last year she starred in Public Enemies opposite Johnny Depp and Christian Bale and then went on to play the daughter of Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnon in The Greatest.

Next, you can catch Carey playing the daughter of Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko in Wall Street II: Money Never Sleeps. While on the set she met her current boyfriend Shia LaBeouf, propelling her even further into the public consciousness, and making them a Hollywood couple to watch. Carey is also due to appear with an all star cast in Brothers, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire before reuniting with on-screen sister Keira Knightley for the drama Never Let Me Go. The lady, it would seem, is fully booked, and has our undivided attention.