Carey Mulligan v. Katie Jarvis: A Telluride Showdown

Carey Mulligan (center) and Katie Jarvis (right) chatting with Leonard Maltin today in Telluride. Photo by Eugene Hernandez/indieWIRE

The two spent nearly hour chatting with Leonard Maltin this morning at the local courthouse here in Telluride.

“I felt like it came quite naturally,” Jarvis elaborated about her experience working in front of a camera for the first time. She played a troubled teen from the projects with an authenticity that seems to be drawn from her own life. “The more it went on, the more I enjoyed it,” Jarvis said, her director Andrea Arnold smiling frequently from a back corner of the room where she listened proudly while sitting on the floor.

“When I first went into it, I didn’t know nothing at all about the film industry,” Jarvis said, adding that she got a lot of important guidance from the filmmaker, “If it weren’t for Andrea,” Jarvis concluded, “Then I wouldn’t be here today. Definitely not.”

Jarvis admires Keira Knightley and hopes to works with her someday if she keeps acting. “I’d love to carry on, because I really, really enjoyed it,” she said about her potential acting career adding that she’s waiting to see if the right script comes along. She said she hopes to try a very different type of character to challenge herself. “I am looking forward to seeing which other characters I can push myself to do,” Jarvis added.

Carey Mulligan, who had both “An Education” and “The Greatest” at Sundance, quickly went right into a role in Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies.” However, all but a few frames of her performance were left on the cutting room floor. Mulligan said she admires Emma Thompson, who guided her in her portrayal of the young woman coming-of-age in the arms of a much older man in the 1960s.

She also wants to find challening characters who are more than a main character’s girlfriend or other supporting roles. “They are quite hard to find,” she noted, “I’d like to something really mad and contemporary. I don’t mind thinking that it could be a complete disaster because that could be kind of an adventure!” Next up for Mulligan is a role in “Never Let Me Go,” a new film by Mark Romanek.

Asked how they are managing to all the attention from film festival audiences and the media, both young women said they were adapting.

“I am really bad at having my picture taken,” Mulligan admitted with a bit of shyness. “I don’t like posing for pictures and all that, I find that really hard,” she added, “I had braces when I was a kid and taught myself not to smile and I’ve never gotten over it.”

“For me the fun part is the press and the cameras and everything because it nice to know that everyone is enjoying the film and my performance as well,” Katie Jarvis said, sounding both grateful and enthusiastic about the chance to talk about the movie. “The hard part is over and now it’s the fun part.”