Carey Mulligan Breaks Down 21 Memorable Looks From 2005 To Now

I know I'm gonna regret saying that.

We'll do a separate video about that for the ladies.

Hi, British Vogue, I'm Carey Mulligan,

and this is My Life In Looks.

Oh, oh, this is so nice.

I didn't realize it was gonna be a real book.

I thought I was just gonna be like pictures stuck in.

Anyway, this is so, my mum's gonna love.

Do I get to keep this?

So this is from Pride and Prejudice,

which was my first ever job,

and I played Kitty Bennet, and this picture is so lovely,

'cause this wasn't part of a scene, this was just fun.

We were just messing around.

The five of us girls had become best friends,

and we were having the most amazing summer.

I decided to copy Jena Malone.

I just thought my safest bet is just do whatever Jena does.

If she laughed, I would laugh,

and if she giggled, I would giggle,

and she was my, sort of, mentor.

And then Rosamund was sort of our big older sister,

and obviously I've worked with Ros now two more times,

most recently in Saltburn,

and I just love all these people so much.

What I was amazed by as well was

that all of these costumes were handmade for all of us,

and I just remember them sort of bringing out

these different fabrics for the costumes

that they were making for Kitty Bennet,

and I was sort of blown away that they would bother

to make something for me,

'cause I had about three lines in the whole film,

and I thought, well they'll just put me in a rental costume,

so it was very exciting.

Anyway, I loved it.

So this is from An Education,

and this photograph was taken in Paris

on our last weekend of filming, and there's a backdrop,

and it was in the middle of just a French square,

and I remember being really embarrassed

that they were taking my picture

and there was just sort of French people around.

I was really excited to be the lead in something,

'cause I'd never been the lead in anything before,

but I also just thought, well this is a lovely little thing,

and maybe it'll play at The Soho or something,

and then we went to Sundance with it and it got bought

and suddenly, kind of, was launched

into this whole awards season thing.

And it was the first time I'd ever worked in France

and come across a French film crew

who break for lunch every day

for like two or three hours and drink wine,

so I thought it was fantastic.

Aw.

This is my first ever Vogue shoot

that Grace Coddington styled in New York.

I remember being so nervous, because it was Vogue,

and I remember Grace just being so unbelievably sweet

and cool and making it all feel like a big art project.

And I remember her being like, You got good strong legs.

Which made me feel actually really good,

'cause I do have good strong legs.

It was so surreal, but I was also so

kind of wildly impressed by what Grace had said coming true,

like we had made something

that didn't feel like a photo of me, in a way,

it felt like we'd made a picture together.

Now I'm wondering what's gonna come up next.

Oh, this is the first time I was nominated

for an Oscar for An Education.

This is the Nominees Lunch.

Cinematographers and writers and editors

and make up people and actors, and we're all, you know,

in a big sort of school photo together.

And I wore Prada, which, I wore Prada all the time

in that season, and they were the first fashion house

to ever lend me anything or dress me for anything

right from the beginning.

I look like my mum.

My mum does this face in photos,

where she doesn't really want to have her photo taken,

so she sort of...

This is my first ever Vogue cover that Peter Lindbergh shot.

But on this, which is Chanel on the front cover,

the bottom just literally, I mean, it was like,

wasn't gonna go on, it was just like a skirt,

and I said, Oh, I really don't wanna wear it.

And Grace just wrapped a towel around my waist,

so just underneath the crop here,

there's like just a beach towel,

because I couldn't get it on.

I remember walking past news stands

and seeing it on news stands

and being like [mimics explosion boom], that's crazy.

There you go.

This is from Drive, that Nicolas Winding Refn directed.

It was super low budget, the whole thing.

All the costumes were from thrift stores or from secondhand,

and the costume designer had to be quite creative

in how she was dressed.

I mean, it was a real prince charming story, really,

like a very dark, murderous prince charming,

and just lots of staring at Ryan, Ryan staring at me,

then maybe one word, and then we'd move on.

It was pretty easy, dialogue wise.

And I loved Nicolas, I thought he was like a mad genius,

and, like, shooting a film in LA just felt like, oh gosh,

this is real Hollywood stuff.

This is from the Met Ball from 2012

when I was on the chair,

which was a massive, huge honor and a huge deal.

It was the year that The Great Gatsby came out.

I wore Prada, and it was the first and potentially only time

I've ever put my hand on my hip for a photograph.

I don't think I've ever done that since then,

because I think I did it, and I went,

Oh, what the fuck am I doing?

I'd gotten married two weeks before,

and we came from our honeymoon to New York

and landed, sort of, the day before the Met Ball

and then did the Met Ball. And I took my new husband,

and we, you know, partied hard,

and it was amazing.

Okay, so this whole Gatsby situation.

The Greatest Gatsby: Carey, Leo, Tobey,

dazzling 3D and a Jay-Z soundtrack

in the movie event of the year.

It was a very different situation

to the Peter Lindbergh shoot,

because this was in New York

and it was in a, sort of, big townhouse,

and millions of people around.

And Grace again, but I do remember feeling like,

[groans] this is a different level.

And of course this jewelry was jewelry

that I'd worn in the film,

so this was all the Tiffany jewels that they had made.

I was in character, I think I, mm, I wasn't really.

I think that's why I was a bit sort of,

because I didn't, I was like, this is Daisy,

but it's not Daisy,

so I was a bit stuck between two things

where I was like, am I me or am I her, or?

This was like, it's the Gatsby cover,

so it just felt like it had this sort of special onus on it.

This is a shot from the film,

and I'm wearing the same Tiffany's jewelry

and the tiara that they made all.

I mean, everything in that film was just so beautiful.

Oh, this is for the Governors Awards.

I had two kids by then, and my son was a baby,

but I was stopping, this might be an overshare, but.

I was stopping breastfeeding,

but this dress was quite busty,

but someone had told me to put cabbage leaves

to stop the milk,

so in this photograph, I am actually

wearing cabbage leaves underneath my.

I know I'm gonna regret saying that, but that is the truth,

and that is what it is, and it works, so.

We'll do a separate video about that for the ladies.

This is in Cannes.

I'm wearing a Dior dress that I loved.

I think this might be one of my favorite dresses ever.

I love this dress so much.

For Wildlife, which is a film that I made

with my friend Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan,

and it was really special,

'cause I just loved the film so much

and loved the experience of working with them so much,

and Zoe and Paul and I have known each other forever,

so we got to, you know, do Cannes together,

which was really amazing.

You know, I had found that Dior really,

I loved wearing their dresses, 'cause they were, you know,

they had beautiful boning and structure to them,

and most particularly so with the dress like this

that it's so well made and so well crafted.

I dunno, I always feel much more comfortable

in a dress like that, and I loved it.

Hello.

This is from Promising Young Woman.

This is when I played Cassie in Promising Young Woman,

and there's a scene where Cassie gets upset

and smashes someone's car up a bit,

which was probably the scene I was most excited to shoot.

I got three takes of hitting cars,

and then Emerald said, That's enough.

I remember it being a hundred degrees, it was so hot.

We were in this kind of road,

and above it, there was a train line.

We realized that if we hung around for long enough,

a train was gonna go over the top,

so we all just stood around,

and then suddenly, they were like, The train's coming!

And we all ran, got into the thing,

and the train went [mimics train chugging], and we cut,

and Emerald said, Oscars for everyone.

It was wonderful.

This is from the Oscars for Promising Young Woman,

and we had just spent basically two years inside,

so I thought I'd wear a massive dress to the Oscars,

and this was this amazing Valentino dress that was just,

the minute I saw it, I was just so excited.

And it felt very Promising Young Woman in a way.

It was just sort of like audacious,

and I loved that it was, you know, it felt

like something I'd probably never have worn before.

And the shapes that Valentino were doing,

again with this incredible pink dress on the Met Gala,

was like just these huge statement dresses

and so much color,

and I just thought it was so much fun,

and I think it was a shift in like,

at that point, two kids in and having done it for a while,

just thinking like, actually,

this is all just incredibly good fun.

And I think that was a bit from Emerald,

working with her on Promising Young Woman,

and a bit from just being a bit older

and just recognizing what a privilege it is

to get to wear these amazing things

and go to these amazing things,

so this is my era of starting to have a lovely time.

Which continues the next year at the Met Gala

when I wore this incredible Schiaparelli dress,

which I have, because they gave it to me,

which kind of blew my mind,

and, again, fitted so beautifully,

and the incredible, and was unbelievably heavy

because of all the, you know, incredible detail

and sequins and the way that they made it.

And my husband came with me,

and he also looked incredibly cool.

So we had an evening of feeling

like quite grown-up cool people.

This was a real step up for us.

And this is continuing my season of wearing sequins.

This was this amazing Gucci look,

which was like a dress underneath, but the coat was always,

you were never gonna wear it without the coat,

it was like the coat came with the thing and the thing.

It also is the beginning of my wearing large blazers era,

which is, I'm really leaning into.

Hey!

So delighted to see my friend Poor Dear Pamela here,

who is probably my favorite role

and probably most important that I've ever played.

Spent many, many, many years preparing to.

No, I had wonderful time rocking up.

One of the coolest things on this was

how completely insane her wardrobe was.

All this mad Butler and Wilson Jewelry,

and I remember when I was at school,

Butler and Wilson Jewelry was like the thing,

and Emerald had just this whole thing

just mapped out in her head.

I just was, I just showed up and was sort of bedecked

in all of this kind of mad finery.

Great times.

This is Maestro.

This is when we were shooting in New York.

This is a Chanel suit that was made for me

to wear as Felicia in the film, she did wear Chanel,

and we shot it in Central Park,

and there were about 20 paparazzi taking photos.

Bradley was amazing, because I was really a little bit,

'cause I hadn't been around that sort of environment

for a long, long time, and this felt like such a massive job

and I was unbelievably nervous,

and he was just so cool directing

and also acting and also making sure

that I wasn't having panic attacks in the trees,

so I love the scene that we made in the film.

Being nominated for a BAFTA and for an Oscar

for Maestro is, it's extraordinary.

I mean, I think it's a massively exciting part

of this, you know, whole experience.

You mainly just want people

to think you're good at your job,

which is essentially what the Oscars are.

It's like your fellow people in the industry

going like, you're good at your job,

and that's really nice.

And this is my most recent Vogue cover for Maestro,

which was the most, probably the most fun

I've ever had doing a photo shoot.

The key was that in every frame I was getting to do stuff,

and this was so much fun, because I was standing in front

of this huge backdrop and having just stuff chucked at me

in the air, and I just had to sort of try and catch it.

It was really wonderful.

I was wearing this amazing Louis Vuitton dress,

and my daughter was eight weeks old,

and I was wearing at least two pairs

of Spanx in some various situation,

and my first day of doing any kind of work after my baby,

and I just loved it.

This Schiaparelli dress,

they remade a dress from the '40s that they had made,

and so Andrew found this reference of a model wearing this,

and there was something so kind of Felicia about it,

but also contemporary.

And I just love Schiaparelli,

I think everything I do is brilliant, so I was so excited,

and it was a beautifully, beautifully made dress.

And I went on a nice date night with my husband,

which is great.

So this is an image by Ignasi Monreal,

which is basically every part I've played

for the last, I guess, 20 years,

and I was completely blown away when I saw it,

'cause I thought it was just the coolest thing.

I kind of feel like it wouldn't be complete

without Poor Dear Pamela there,

so I'm glad that we managed to get this done

after she had already made her entrance.

It does make me think maybe there's more work

to be done on Pamela in some future spinoff.

I'll call Emerald after this.

And this is what I've started doing

since Promising Young Woman is

I've always put a heart above my i,

'cause everything should be heart based.

What do I say?

Thank you for watching.

I've been [laughs] Carey Mulligan.

I've been Carey Mulligan,

and this has been My Life In Looks.

[Crew] Is that not what we usually say?

That'll be fine. [crew laughs]

It'll be fine!