Carey Mulligan on An Education

Like a great pop song, Carey Mulligan has the elusive quality of seeming fresh and yet familiar, like she's always been there. In a little black dress in a Sydney hotel room, big brown eyes beaming, she reminds you of the Audreys - Hepburn and Tautou - with a dash of Michelle Williams' shyness.

The London-born actor has been hanging waifishly in the corners of celebrity for a few years, playing a Bennet sister here (Pride & Prejudice), a gangster's moll there (Public Enemies), even taking the bulk of the screen time in a one-off Doctor Who episode designed to give star David Tennant a rest (the award-winning ‘Blink').

Her impish features mean that at 22 she could convincingly play a 16-year-old schoolgirl in new British dramedy An Education. "The first time I walked on set the crew were like, ‘Who's this kid?'" she recalls. "I had no make-up on and one of those bras that really flatten you out. And when you're around the extras, 16 and 17 year olds, you change to fit in."

Directed by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners), An Education is based on a memoir by Lynn Barber, a well-known writer of profiles for the UK Observer newspaper. In the early 1960s, Barber entered into an affair with a charming stranger more than twice her age. In the fictionalised script by Nick Hornby, Jenny (Mulligan), a bright kid who smokes Gauloises, sings along to French pop songs and aims for a place at Oxford, is initially resistant to the approaches of David (Peter Sarsgaard), who offers her a lift in the rain and invites her to a classical music concert.

But it's 1961 and London is getting ready to swing. Jenny knows there's a big world beyond her grey Twickenham home, and is soon embroiled in a whirlwind of parties, art auctions and glamorous friends. "David brings the 60s to her," Mulligan says.

Naturally, there is more to this guy than meets the eye, but Jenny is not a victim, the actor argues. "A lot of us walk into these mistakes with our eyes open. Jenny's not exactly innocent - she leans in for the first kiss, and says she will sleep with him when she turns 17."  

An Education premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where Mulligan was hailed as the festival's brightest new star. She is hotly tipped for an Oscar nomination - quite an achievement for an untrained young actor who botched her auditions for London's major drama schools with an overwrought choice of monologue. "I was crap," she admits, "standing there talking about how I wanted to slit my wrists when I was clearly very sheltered."

Lone Scherfig says that Mulligan was her first choice for Jenny in a lengthy and arduous casting process. "She can carry a film," Scherfig says. "It's not about beauty; it's that you care for her in a way you wouldn't for others. She has strength and fragility at the same time."

Mulligan's co-stars include many major UK names, cannily cast against type. Sophisticated beauty Rosamund Pike plays a brainless dolly bird; bearish Alfred Molina is Jenny's weak-willed father; glamorous Olivia Williams is her spinsterish teacher; and Emma Thompson plays her austere school headmistress. "It was a ridiculous cast," Mulligan says. "Every couple of weeks I'd get a phone call saying ‘this person has signed on' and I'd be like, really?"

The crucial role of Jenny's seducer is played by Sarsgaard, the likeable American star of Orphan and Kinsey. Mulligan subsequently appeared on Broadway with him in Chekhov's The Seagull. "I've learned more from working with Peter than anyone. He's the most playful actor; every night he'll do things differently just to put energy back in the room. One night in The Seagull he lay on the floor for half of his monologue." She laughs. "You never get bored."

An Education screens from 22 Oct.

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