There was a time when the name Julia Roberts would have drawn a blank stare from movie fans.She was little known in 1990 when "Pretty Woman" hit theaters, but that film instantly turned her into a Hollywood It Girl.
Flash forward almost 20 years and Hollywood appears set to crown a new It Girl, Carey Mulligan. Her name is barely known outside the film world, but among those who do know it, there is an excitement that hasn't been equaled in years.
Critics like the Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern are comparing the 24-year-old British actress to Audrey Hepburn.
"One not only thinks of Hepburn," Morgenstern wrote recently, "but of Julie Christie bursting on the world in [1963]."Says critic Roger Ebert, "You're pretty sure this is the birth of a star."Ebert and Morgenstern's words come in reviews of the new film, "An Education," in which Mulligan takes on the complex lead role of a 16-year-old girl who becomes romantically linked to an older man."She really is brilliant," said "An Education" director Lone Scherfig. "She has fragility, she has humor, she can be very moving, she's bright and she's great to look at."
Scherfig's film debuted in January at the Sundance Film Festival and it was there the buzz ignited around Mulligan.
Casting director Sarah Finn caught Mulligan's performance and promptly brought her in to audition for a key role in Oliver Stone's new project, the much-anticipated sequel to "Wall Street.""Oliver Stone loved her," Finn said. "He thought she was an immense, immense and very special talent."
In quick succession, Mulligan booked the role of Winnie Gekko (the daughter of Michael Douglas' character, Gordon Gekko), and major parts in a slew of other high-profile films, starring opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, Keira Knightley and Helen Mirren.
"After ['An Education'] she's going to be in five, six new films," said Scherfig. "Her career is taking off with a speed I've never seen before.""She is ... one of the young actresses that everyone [in Hollywood] is looking at right now and everyone has at the top of their list," Finn said.Finn describes Mulligan as "a very unusual combination of being intelligent and warm and complex and yet very engaging, very appealing, very easy to relate to and connect to."
In short, an It Girl.
Tag, you're 'It'
Ask the London, England-born Mulligan, 24, about being called an It Girl and she blushes, averts her eyes and flashes a set of dimples to die for.
