Posing on a New York rooftop in an enormous pink couture dress and sunglasses, Carey Mulligan looks a vision of calm.
But what the British actress was hiding beneath her cool exterior was the fact her two-month-old son was also on the shoot, and she was breastfeeding him between shots.
The star of Suffragette and An Education, who also has a two-year-old daughter, has opened up about juggling her work commitments – including this cover shot for Vogue Australia – with motherhood.
Posing in an enormous pink couture dress and sunglasses, Carey Mulligan looks a vision of calm as she poses for Vogue Australia. But what the actress was hiding was the fact her two-month-old son was also on the shoot, and she was breastfeeding him between shots
Describing the shoot, the 32-year-old said: ‘We had a really fun time; it was mad. I was putting on sunglasses and wearing these absolutely enormous, crazy gowns. I like shoots when you can sort of disappear into it all.’
Yet the pressures of having a young child on the shoot were far from new for her, as she said: ‘It’s the same as when I had my daughter.
‘We started press for Suffragette like three weeks after I gave birth to my daughter, so you just get back into it and it’s fine, because it’s not like filming, where you need to use your brain all the time. It’s much more about kind of showing up.’
Doting mother: The Great Gatsby actress also revealed she was six weeks pregnant when she was offered the lead part of the detective in Collateral
The Great Gatsby actress also revealed she was six weeks pregnant when she was offered the lead part of the detective in Collateral.
But she said playwright and director, David Hare, who she had worked with on the theatre production of Skylight when she was pregnant with her first child, barely blinked
She said: ‘I wrote to him and said: “You’ll never guess, but I’m pregnant again. So can I do it pregnant?”
Candid: The star of Suffragette and An Education, who also has a two-year-old daughter, has opened up about juggling her work commitments – including this cover shot for Vogue Australia – with motherhood
‘He said: “I don’t see why not.” I loved that he didn’t rewrite my character, that he just didn’t make a fuss about it.
‘It felt more real to life, because when you’re pregnant you do just go about your life.’
On the recent Harvey Weinstein scandal, she said: ‘I know a lot of actresses, friends of mine, who have felt vulnerable, but I don’t think I ever have, in that sense.
Close family: The star of Suffragette and An Education also has a two-year-old daughter with husband Marcus Mumford
‘I have felt belittled and I think I’ve felt kind of lesser-than. I’ve definitely experienced sexism in terms of how I’ve been treated. When I’ve tried to assert my opinion on scripts, for example, I feel I’ve had to fight a bit harder to get my voice heard.’
Following a two-year hiatus, Miss Mulligan, who is married to the musician Marcus Mumford, is currently starring in Netflix series Mudbound, and will lead the BBC drama Collateral early next year.
In February she will also return to the stage, in a one-woman play by Dennis Kelly, but says she ‘doesn’t even know’ how she will cope with the ‘unbearably nerve-racking’ previews.
Read all about it: The full interview is available to read in the January edition of Vogue Australia