FIGHT starter

“I’ve never been in a film people might actually see before,” Carey Mulligan says with a knowing grin. It’s not quite true, given that she burst onto the scene a decade ago when her role as a lovestruck teenage girl in An Education garnered a Best Actress Oscar nomination, but it’s a joke not without merit. In the years since, Mulligan has opted for a rare selectivity with her roles, choosing to work mostly on smaller, arty titles. She’s racked up an impressive CV, with highlights such as the glowering songstress Jean in the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis and messy mother Jeanette in Paul Dano’s Wildlife. Her role as Cassie Thomas in Promising Young Woman fits alongside her repertoire of complex female characters while offering audiences a chance to see her in a whole new light.

Mulligan: Yeah, I guess so – I mean, it’s not like I pick up a script and think, ‘Ah, I really hope I can attack the man with this one,’ but I guess those probably are the parts that are interesting. There seems to have been an improvement, but in the 15 years I’ve been doing this, there have been