#Berlin Flashback: Carey Mulligan Earned High Marks for ‘An Education’

Fifteen years ago, Carey Mulligan made her first visit to the Berlin Film Festival to support her star-making turn in the dramedy An Education. Lone Scherfig’s film centers on Jenny (Mulligan), a teen in 1960s suburban London who falls for a smooth-talking older man played by Peter Sarsgaard.

Scherfig (Italian for Beginners) shared an agent with writer Nick Hornby, who penned the script based on journalist Lynn Barber’s autobiographical essay. 

The movie boasted supporting roles for Emma Thompson, Alfred Molina and Rosamund Pike but had a bumpy path and lost financing prior to production. Mulligan told THR at the time that 18 months passed between her initial audition and the project getting the greenlight, leading her to take a job at a pub in the interim.

When An Education premiered at Sundance in January 2009, THR praised it as a “smart, moving but not inaccessible entry in the coming-of-age canon.” Sony Pictures Classics released the title that October, and it became an awards darling, picking up three Oscar noms, including for best picture, and landing a BAFTA win for Mulligan. 

The actress returns to Berlin this year with Netflix’s sci-fi drama Spaceman, starring opposite Adam Sandler. An Education producer Finola Dwyer tells THR that she still marvels at the acting choices made by Mulligan, currently an Oscar nominee for Maestro: “We already knew it, but she was the real deal.”