Carey Hannah Mulligan is an English actress born on May 28, 1985, in Westminster, London, England. Her father, Stephen, was originally from Liverpool, and her mother, Nano (née Booth), a college lecturer, came from Llandeilo in West Wales. Her great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland. Mulligan has one sibling; an older brother named Owain. At age three, Mulligan moved with her family from England to Germany after her father accepted the job of managing the European arm of Intercontinental Hotels. Due to her father’s job, her family lived in expensive hotels for eight years. Mulligan stated that during her childhood she was “quite shy”, and that until the age of fifteen she had been a “tomboy”. Mulligan also acknowledged that she was “quite straight-laced” during her childhood and that she was very academic until she was fourteen, having then become more interested in acting.

She made her acting debut as Kitty Bennet in Pride & Prejudice (2005). Following Pride & Prejudice, she had television roles in the BBC Charles Dickens adaptation Bleak House (2005) and the following year she appeared in The Amazing Mrs Pritchard. In 2007, she began with roles in the one-off television dramas My Boy Jack and Northanger Abbey. The same year, she made her Broadway debut in The Seagull to critical acclaim.

At age 24, she gained widespread recognition for playing the lead role of Jenny in An Education (2009), winning a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Additionally, Mulligan was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. Following her breakthrough role as Jenny, the same year she appeared in the dramatic films Brothers and The Greatest. Mulligan’s upcoming films include supporting roles in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the sequel to the 1987 film, and Never Let Me Go; both films have 2010 release dates. She is currently slated to appear in five films, all of which are in pre-production.

Source: Wikipedia