Carey Mulligan Wore a Nose Ring and Chain-Smoked for ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ Audition: ‘I Went All in’

Carey Mulligan got all but inked for her “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” audition.

The Oscar-nominated actress recalled trying out for the 2011 David Fincher thriller during Variety’s Actors on Actors alongside “Shame” co-star Michael Fassbender. Mulligan was so determined to land the role that she almost changed her entire appearance to what Fassbender called a “punk sort of look.”

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“I think I even, like, almost dyed my hair black or something,” Mulligan said. “I definitely wore a nose ring. And I got my friend who’s a makeup artist…” The “Maestro” star added, “I went all in. I did a Bradley [Cooper], I went all in.” She said she thinks she even “chain-smoked” before the audition.”

“It was very nice, but I obviously didn’t get the job,” said Mulligan, who is, this year, up for awards for her similarly transformative performance in Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro.”

Instead of Mulligan, Rooney Mara was cast in “Dragon Tattoo”; Mara later credited Fincher for becoming a “mentor” during production after collaborating on “The Social Network” together. Mara also infamously pierced her nipples for the role.

This isn’t the first time Mulligan has lamented missing out on working with Fincher: The “Saltburn” star revealed to Little White Lies in 2012 that she “auditioned three times” for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

“The first audition I did, I don’t think I was sort of in his mind for it,” Mulligan said of director Fincher. “So the first audition I did for the casting director without him. And then the second was with him and the third one was with him. He is very specific. He tells you exactly what he wants you to do. He’s very kind. I was intimidated, but he was very. … He’s very direct. I like people who are direct.”

Mulligan continued, “I just sort of went all out for it because I did feel a little bit stuck in sort of being young-looking or playing these parts. And I’d done so much costume drama and all these things kept on presenting themselves as opportunities and I just thought, ‘If I could do that… ha!’ And also to work with him and to work with Daniel Craig was an amazing opportunity. It was such a great character. But he was just very, yeah, very specific, very direct, very honest and quite brief — with me, at least. His reputation of course is that he takes, like, 45 takes so him being brief with me was probably an indication that I wasn’t going to get the job. But that’s OK.”

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