Rooney Mara is one of those actresses who are not afraid of bold experiments on herself for an interesting role. Playing the closed and weird Lisbeth Salander in the film adaptation of the novel "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", she did a real piercing in her ears and forehead, and also parted with long hair for a long time. Rooney's efforts were not in vain, the role brought her nominations for the Golden Globe and Oscar. Since then, the career of the actress has been developing steadily, bringing her closer to the status of a Hollywood superstar every year.
Biography: childhood, family, choice of profession
Timothy Mara and Kathleen McNulty named their second daughter, born April 17, 1985, Patricia Rooney. However, after the start of her acting career, the girl left only her middle name, finding it more interesting and sonorous.
Rooney is a member of a family clan that is closely associated with American football. Her maternal relatives founded the famous Pittsburgh Steelers club, and her paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the New York Giants. The girl has Irish, French, Italian, German roots. Also among the relatives of Rooney Mara there are prominent political figures who worked in the US Congress and the foreign affairs agency.
The future actress grew up surrounded by two brothers and older sister Kate, who also successfully starred in films. The family lived in the city of Bradford, New York. My father served as vice president of the New York Giants team, my mother worked as a real estate agent. Rooney attended Fox Lane Public School. After her graduation in 2003, the girl was a member of the Traveling School program, in which she spent 4 months traveling around South America studying the environment.
Miss Mara began to receive higher education at the University of Washington, but a year later she transferred to New York University. In 2010, she received a diploma from the Gallatin Scholl of Individualized Study, an interdisciplinary college at the university, in which students develop their own curriculum that meets their career goals. Rooney studied psychology, social policy and nonprofit organizations on an international scale, because she wanted to be part of family charity.
Together with her mother and sister, the future actress often attended music shows on Broadway, loved old Hollywood films. However, uncertainty and fear of failure prevented her from entering the stage and trying her hand at some amateur production. In high school, Rooney still played the role of Juliet, although she admitted that she felt awkward from the incident and would prefer to reincarnate in Romeo if it was possible.
While studying at New York University, she took part in student films. She began to attend the first castings only when she was 19 years old, unlike her elder sister Kate, who had been playing films since the age of 12.
Actor career
Rooney got her first movie role thanks to her sister Kate. In 2005, she starred in the horror episode Urban Legends 3: Bloody Mary. In 2006, she played a girl with mental disabilities in the series Law and Order. Then she took part in two more television projects - The Women's Club for Murder Investigations (2007) and Cleaner (2008).
Since 2008, the actress has been betting on cinema, appearing mainly in low-budget independent films:
- “The Dream Guy” (2008);
- Tanner Hall (2009);
- “Rebellious youth” (2009);
- The Challenge (2009).
Rooney's popularity increased markedly after the release of the remake of the film “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (2010), where she got the main role of Nancy Holbrook. According to the actress herself, this work was the reason for her disappointment in the acting profession. From the end of her career, Miss Mara was saved by an invitation to the film "Social Network" by the famous director David Fincher. Her character appeared on the screen at the very beginning of the film to leave her young man, the prototype of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The scene of the separation of the characters Rooney and Jesse Eisenberg was re-shot several dozen times.
Director David Fincher again remembered the young actress when he started filming the next project - “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. The adaptation of the popular novel by the Swedish writer Stig Larsson was supposed to be a high-profile event in the world of cinema. The roles of Lisbeth Salander were claimed by Scarlett Johansson, Keira Knightley, Kristen Stewart, Jennifer Lawrence, but director Fincher chose Rooney Mara. According to him, it was she who had the “right combination of attractiveness and strangeness.”
For this role, the actress shaved her eyebrows, cut her hair short and dyed her hair, made a piercing. She did a lot of sports, lost weight, to look more like anorexia-suffering Lisbeth. The film "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" showed good box office and received a positive rating from critics. Rooney's acting was recognized as strong, convincing, "hypnotic." She received first career nominations for an Oscar and Golden Globe.
In 2012, Mara starred with director Terrence Malik in the film “Song by Song, ” which was released only in 2017. She replaced actress Blake Lively in Steven Soderbergh's side effect (2013), which also starred Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Channing Tatum.
Rooney’s second major success is related to Todd Haynes’s Carol movie, released in 2015. The plot focuses on the love affair of a mature woman performed by Cate Blanchett and a young saleswoman played by Mara. Events in the picture take place in the middle of the twentieth century. For the role of the girl Therese, the actress again received nominations for an Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA Award. In addition, she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress.
In 2016, Mara voiced the characters of Karasu and Vasya in the animated film “Kubo. The legend of the samurai. " The film “Lion” (2016), in which she played a minor character, was nominated for prestigious film awards. The latest works of Rooney Mara:
- “Discovery” (2017);
- The Ghost Story (2017);
- “Mary Magdalene” (2018);
- “Do not worry, he will not go far” (2018).
