Cosmetic procedures are common currency in Hollywood, but Carey Mulligan stands as a notable exception — an actor who, in an era when performers increasingly prioritize appearance over craft, has chosen to resist. Speaking on the Skip Intro podcast, Mulligan said it has become “harder than ever” to resist unrealistic beauty standards and cosmetic procedures, given the volume of online content and industry pressure to conform to a particular look.
“In the society we live in now, there’s an obsessive level of scrutiny around the things we think we can change because it’s available, because there is an option,” she said. “In times gone by, there wasn’t this option to augment yourself.”
She continued: “And because you’re also confronted with filtered pictures and face-tuned photos of people, the vast majority of the public look at something and think that it’s just how someone looks — and, of course, it isn’t for the most part. I mean, sometimes it is, but for the most part, it isn’t.”
Mulligan, now 40, leads a quiet, low-profile life offscreen. She currently stars in Season 2 of Netflix’s “Beef,” the Emmy-winning anthology series from creator Lee Sung Jin, playing Lindsay Crane-Martín, the privately embittered wife of a country club manager played by Oscar Isaac, according to Netflix Tudum. Married to musician Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons, she is based in rural England, roughly four hours southwest of London, and does not have an Instagram account. As she explained to Vogue in 2010: “If people have all those other pictures and stories associated with you, they have to work harder to believe you as a character.”
Mulligan’s personal choices reflect a consistent rejection of herd mentality, making her stated decision to forgo cosmetic surgery all the more consistent with her broader outlook. Speaking about what she sees as a vicious cycle of appearance-driven anxiety, she said, “We have this cycle of being fed the answer — ‘this cream, this injection, this surgery or whatever’ — it’s very hard. Comparison is the thief of joy. You just look at everybody around you and think that you fall short.”
She added: “This path of trying to fill that hole by, ‘if I can change my face, if I can make myself look 10 years younger, then I’ll be happy,’ is just not true for anybody. It just isn’t.”
Mulligan was careful not to pass judgment on those who have undergone cosmetic work. “Even the people who look amazing and have done [cosmetic] work — and zero judgement — but if they’re happy, it won’t be because of that,” she said. “It’ll be because there’ll be some other great thing in their life.”
She returned to the broader cultural pressure, adding: “It’s harder now, probably than ever, because of social media, and because of the beauty industry as a whole. I’ve got no judgement — there isn’t an enormous amount of room for judgement because, particularly in the public eye, you really can’t win. But it does get too much airspace.”
Mulligan’s role in “Beef” has given her a fresh vantage point on the cosmetics industry’s growing influence. Her character, Lindsay, she explained on the podcast, embodies a particular kind of self-erasure.
“If I was [Lindsay’s] therapist, I’d say there’s a gaping lack of self-acceptance,” Mulligan said. “It has to be, on some level, about a grief about time past — and of fear about the time that’s left. Ultimately, that’s why we must all be so afraid of the idea of aging. There was a thing I talked to [creator Lee Sung Jin] about really early on, which was this idea of a period of time passing in an instant, and how scary that is to all of us.”