Mulligan has said that her passion and love for acting was first kindled at her old school Woldingham School, where she took part in a school production of Sweet Charity in her final year, and where she was also a student head of drama.

I had wanted to act for a really long time, but other schools I had been to did not have such good drama departments. Everyone was so encouraging. You could do anything you wanted to, although you had to take it seriously. If you missed rehearsals, you were out.

Mulligan's career started with a number of theatre productions, including a production of Forty Winks at the Royal Court Theatre. She got her first major appearance in Joe Wright's 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice playing Kitty Bennet alongside Keira Knightley, Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland. Mulligan then went on to play orphan Ada Clare in the BBC's big-budget adaptation of Bleak House.

In 2006 she appeared in BBC series The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, as well as appearing in episodes of ITV's Marple andTrial & Retribution.

In 2007 she returned to the theatre to appear in a Royal Court production of The Seagull, which ran from January to March. During the show's run she developed acute appendicitis which prevented her from performing in several shows.[citation needed] She also appeared in an ITV adaptation of Northanger Abbey and episodes of Waking the Dead and Doctor Who. Mulligan narrated a number of programmes for the CBeebies channel[citation needed].

Mulligan has a role in an as yet unreleased film adaptation of Blake Morrison's memoir And When Did You Last See Your Father? and adaptations of Arcadia and Life Class for BBC Radio 4.

She will next work on the ITV drama My Boy Jack with Daniel Radcliffe and David Haig.

Television

Theatre

Films