Carey Mulligan chose ‘Money Never Sleeps’ to be intimidated
TORONTO — Carey Mulligan wanted to be in a “big boys’ film and be intimidated.” Enter stage left Oliver Stone and “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.”
She plays Gordon Gekko’s daughter, Winnie, and the girlfriend of a young trader, portrayed by Shia LaBeouf, who is her real-life boyfriend. In Toronto to talk about “Never Let Me Go,” questions about the “Wall Street” sequel with Michael Douglas were inevitable.
The British actress, 25, shot “Never Let Me Go,” an adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel, before her Oscar nomination for “An Education” and the “Wall Street” follow-up.
“The challenge really was there were other roles that were going on in England that I was kind of involved in, and I kind of felt like there was nothing where I’d wake up in the morning and think, ‘Aaw … how am I going to do this?'” she told a half-dozen reporters at a swanky hotel.
“Wall Street” fit that bill as she charged herself with trying to “make the girlfriend role in a Hollywood film effective and not just redundant. I think a lot of the time — through no fault of the actress — the girlfriend can get sort of marginalized and can become just an accessory to the plot.”
She thought Winnie had the potential to be more than that.
“I did want to be one of the few women in a big masculine film and it was fun. Oliver didn’t treat me like a girl. I don’t think he saw me as a girl because I had short hair or something,” she said with a laugh.
Today, Mulligan sports streaked cropped blond hair, a far cry from the long dark tresses of her innocent in “An Education.” She played a 16-year-old who tumbles for a man who represents love, sophistication, passage to an arty, adult world and, ultimately, heartbreak.
Mulligan said she felt as if she received equal treatment from Stone and added, “That was really thrilling, actually, and I loved working with all of them, with Michael especially.” Even though, in keeping with their roles, they kept a distance from each other.
Gordon Gekko is estranged from his daughter along with his one-time Wall Street colleagues who amassed fortunes while he served time for securities fraud.
“We didn’t get all cuddly off set, we were kind of quite removed so when we played those scenes … I still didn’t really know him, and that was kind of appropriate because I didn’t know him in the film. So that was cool.”
The director asked Mulligan to watch 1987’s “Wall Street,” so she could glean the “Gekko-isms,” for starters. It also gave her a “sense memory” of Gekko’s long-gone wife, played by Sean Young and absent from the new release.
Mulligan understands why her real-life parents weren’t keen on her pursuit of acting without a backup plan. “They wanted me to go to university, get a degree and be able to teach, at least, or do anything sensible.
“So I was very angry at the time, but then I get it. I know so many brilliant, talented — way more talented than me — [actors], and they don’t get work because they haven’t had that one meeting that sparks off another meeting, and they haven’t got that one job that gets them seen.”
And she knows she’s not alone in the starlet stratosphere, having posed with eight others for Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue earlier this year. Although Mulligan has been on screen and busy promoting projects, she had not started a new movie until just recently.
“I think the only reason I hadn’t worked this year is ’cause I felt like there were things that were too similar to ‘An Education’ or too similar to ‘Wall Street’ or too similar to ‘Never Let Me Go,’ and the parts that weren’t were not getting financed.”
She next will appear with Ryan Gosling, among others, in the action thriller “Drive.” It’s about a Hollywood stunt driver and loner who moonlights as a getaway driver, with Mulligan as a neighbor. It’s scheduled for a 2011 release.