Carey Mulligan Looks Soft And Lovely

Carey Mulligan struts a major 1940's Victory Roll up-do while donning a Nina Ricci jacket as the latest cover girl for W magazine's January issue.

On Shame’s full-frontal nude scene... “I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of nudity. I’ve done only semi-nude, very innocent things in the past, and I’ve always been of the quite British mind-set that I won’t do gratuitous nudity … I thought I had a week before the nude scene to go to the gym, but we shot it on my first day of filming.”

On singing in Shame...."I’ve never sung in a movie before. The point wasn’t really that Sissy was a great singer—it was more that she attracted people. I sing “New York, New York” in the film, and Steve wanted it live. We did 15 takes—because every time I made a mistake or my voice fell out of tune or I lost my breath, we’d have to cut, and Steve wanted to do the whole thing in one go. At one point he wanted Sissy to sing something else and asked me to make up a song. He said, “You’re an artist, aren’t you? We can’t afford the rights to a famous song, so make one up.” I was walking around the room thinking, How do you write a song?! Eventually I made up this really bluesy song and sang two lines."

See, you’re an artist..."A bullshit artist [laughs]."

On being theatrical as a child... “I would put my earphones on and sing along to soundtracks of musicals like Les Misérables. I’d act it out in the mirror and cry. When I was 11 or 12, I asked my parents about going to a performing arts school, and they said no. Although I did audition to be a presenter on a TV show called Dig It.”

On The having an innate optimism..."Yeah, the producers invited 3,000 kids to audition. They put you in a big inflatable chair, and you had to talk for a minute about something. They said, “Pick any topic.” I talked about my guinea pig, and it was awful. I got 20 seconds in, and then I had nothing left to say, so I just sat there. For some reason, I was still really shocked that I didn’t get the job. Even though I knew I’d been terrible, I thought they might have seen something in me that they could work with."

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