- Elliot (ex-Ellen) Page, Inception, 2009. After Evan Rachel Wood turned him down, director Christopher Nolan considered Mulligan, Emily Blunt, Emily Roberts, Jessy Schram andTaylor Swift before settling on settling upon a fifthOscar nominee for his thriller in…the architecture of the mind.
- Andrea Riseborough, Brighton Rock, 2010. Carey was set as Pinkie’s girl,Rose, until her rise and rise continued as Gordon Gekko’s daughter in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. On UK TV, the award winning Riseborough had played the young Margaret Thatcher – a rumoured subject for Stoneat the time. She was soon playing the infamous Duchess of Windsor in WE for a directoer named Madonna.
- Rooney Mara, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, 2010.
- Noomi Rapace, Prometheus, 2011. For his Alien prequel (is it?/it isn’t/oh yes, it is) Sir Ridley Scott beat all Hollywood to signing The Girl of the Hour – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in Sweden’s Millennium trilogy. That’s how Noomi beat Gemma Arterton, Abbie Cornish, Anne Hathaway, Natalie Portman, Olivia Wilde to the Alien prequel. The initially cast Charlize Theron switched to Meredith Vickers, instead. And Carey became The Great Gatsby‘s Daisy.
- Alexis Bledel, Violet & Daisy, 2011. Carey just couldn’t do everything requested of her. (She was committed to Drive with Ryan Gosling). Yet it seemed that Saoirse Ronan could yet she still became Daisy opposite Bledel’s Violet – two assassins hunting James Gandolfini. “We’re sent to kill Tony Soprano,”said Ronan, “which is mad.”
- Emma Roberts, Adult World, 2011. A few years back, the Hawaii-born auteur Scott Coffey had Julia Roberts toying with one of his scripts.Her neice didn’t toy… when Carey joined The Great Gatsby.
- Dakota Fanning, Effie, 2011. Both Carey and Saoirse Ronan had been up for the titular Euphemic Gray – teenage bride of the Victorian art critic John Ruskin (played by Greg Wise, husband of the writer and co-star Emma Thompson).
- Sandra Bullock, Gravity, 2012. . Once Angelina Jolie passed (twice), they all wanted the 3D sf special written by Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron and his son, Jonas – Mulligan, Abbie Cornish, Marion Cotillard, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Salma Hayek, Blake Lively, Sienna Miller, Natalie Portman, Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz, Olivia Wilde… Because the female astronaut is alone on-screen for most of the movie. (Sorry about that, George Clooney). Carey did better. She won Daisy in The Great Gatsby.
- Mia Wasikowska, Stoker, 2012. Big switch for the first English-language film of SouthKorean director Chan-wook Park (Oldboy), His first choice ofJodie Foster and Mulligan became Nicole Kidman and Mia as the mother and daughter troubled by the most mysterious Uncle Charlie since Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt some 60 years earlier.
- Rooney Mara, Her, 2012. Schedules, schedules! And so Mara became the wife divorcing writer Joaquin Phoenix, soon falling in love with his phone’s sentient operating system.(Well, the OS was voiced by Scarlett Johansson!).
- Julianne Hough, Safe Haven, 2012. The delightful Utah blonde from Burlesque and Footloose won the lead when minds were changed by Carey… and Keira Knightley.
- Isabel Lucas, Electric Slide, 2013. Mulligan and Ewan McGregor were selected before the project was shelved for years. After renewed interest (and budget), Jim Sturgess and Isabel took over the true tale serial bank robber Eddie Dodson and his lover, Pauline. The ex-furniture salesman struck 64 banks in eight months, including six in a day!
- Rachel McAdams, A Most Wanted Man, 2013. 2014. Dutch director Anton Corbijn aimed high for his Annabel Richter from John le Carre’s 21st novel – Mulligan, Amy Adams, Jessia Chastain – and finished sadly, badly with a below par McAdams. Among the film’s seven producers were two of Le Carré’s sons, Simon and Stephen Cornwell.
- Elle Fanning, The Neon Demon, 2015. Once upon another time, it was called I Walk With The Dead. With Mulligan due as Jesse, the model wannabe victim of beauty-obsessed women.
- Rebecca Ferguson, The Greatest Showmnan on Earth, 2016. The Swedish, Ferguson was a better choice than Mullgian or Ellen Page for opera singer Jenny Lind – The Swedish Nightingale. She first toured the US in 1850, under the aegis of master showman PT Barnum – Hugh Jackman’s dream rôle since 2009.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 15