{"id":369663,"date":"2026-03-28T10:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T10:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/369663\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T10:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T10:54:13","slug":"kate-mara-me-and-the-kids-live-and-breathe-arsenal-whether-we-like-it-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/369663\/","title":{"rendered":"Kate Mara: \u2018Me and the kids live and breathe Arsenal \u2013 whether we like it or not\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Kate Mara<\/a> needs a phone charger \u2013 portable, preferably. Procuring one from her team, the actor walks towards me at the back of Claridge\u2019s restaurant, the click-clack of high heels echoing off the marble floor. Introductions are made; hands are shaken. <\/p>\n

The actor has a no-nonsense air about her that feels very New York. She grew up an hour north of the city, where she lives now with her husband, the British actor Jamie Bell, and their three children<\/a>. But beneath the professionalism and the perfectly pressed all-white outfit, Mara, 43, can be candid in a way that catches you off guard \u2013 flashes of vulnerability that instantly endear you to her. \u201cIt\u2019s 90 per cent rejection still to this day,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cI\u2019ll see something and ask, \u2018Oh, how come I never got that script?\u2019 And my agent will say, \u2018We tried. They\u2019re not interested.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

For every \u201cno\u201d Mara hears, there are plenty of yeses, too. Her first big one came when, at 19, she landed the role of Heath Ledger\u2019s daughter in Brokeback Mountain (2005). Then there was House of Cards, in which her ambitious young reporter was pushed in front of a train by Kevin Spacey. Along the way, parts in high-profile projects like 24, 127 Hours, The Martian, Iron Man 2, and Entourage made Mara a steady and recognisable screen presence. Her signature red hair, cut to shoulder-length today and parted down the middle, has helped with that. <\/p>\n

Her latest project, Apple TV+\u2019s Imperfect Women, was a big yes. The show stars Mara, Kerry Washington<\/a> and Elisabeth Moss<\/a> as the three best friends of its title, whose bond quickly unravels after one of them is murdered. Mara plays Nancy, a glamorous socialite whose dark past and impulses threaten to destroy her picture-perfect life. <\/p>\n

As far as characters go, Nancy is a juicy one, layered like a strawberry trifle laced with arsenic. It is classic Mara; as an actor, she specialises in a tightly coiled emotional intensity. But it was equally the chance to work with Washington and Moss that appealed to her on this occasion. \u201cEven two female leads is rare, so to have three is unheard of,\u201d says Mara, \u201cand then for it to be two actors who I\u2019ve admired and who have been acting as long as I have, that\u2019s a rare opportunity.\u201d <\/p>\n

The fact that they are all mums was a \u201cvery bonding thing\u201d, adds Mara. \u201cI haven\u2019t had that many experiences where I\u2019m on set and the other actors have children necessarily, especially other females. So that\u2019s a really special thing; you don\u2019t feel quite as alone in that pull of wanting to be at home but wanting to do a great job at work.\u201d The all-women team of directors was a welcome surprise, too. \u201cI\u2019ve been acting since I was 14, and I think I worked with one female director in the first 20 years.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"KerryKerry Washington, Mara and Elisabeth Moss in \u2018Imperfect Women\u2019 (Apple TV+)<\/p>\n

There are shades of Nancy in Mara \u2013 that singular drive that led her, as a teenager, to forgo a spot at the prestigious Tisch School of Performing Arts and instead move to Los Angeles by herself, with only her Boston terrier for company. \u201cI was very confident,\u201d says Mara. \u201cAt least in my dream. I don\u2019t know if I necessarily thought, \u2018This will definitely happen for me\u2019 \u2013 but I knew I was going to try, no matter what. I was very motivated and would have done anything to get there. To work as hard as I possibly could.\u201d <\/p>\n

Back home in Bedford, a bucolic suburb also home to Martha Stewart, it was not acting but sports that loomed large in the Mara household. In an NFL crossover that sounds like the plot of a Netflix romcom, her father and his siblings own the New York Giants, while her mother\u2019s side of the family owns the Pittsburgh Steelers. \u201cI support both teams,\u201d Mara says diplomatically. Her husband has come on board with the whole American football thing. \u201cJamie lives and breathes the New York Giants \u2013 and me and the kids, whether we like it or not, live and breathe Arsenal,\u201d she laughs. \u201cI feel like the English football season never ends!\u201d <\/p>\n

\"MaraMara was 19 when she got the part of Alma Jr opposite screen father Heath Ledger in \u2018Brokeback Mountain\u2019 (Focus Features)<\/p>\n

Mara and her sister Rooney, best known for Carol and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo<\/a>, have unintentionally made a start at building their own little dynasty \u2013 not a sports one, mind you. Both have settled down with other actors: Mara with Bell, Rooney with Joaquin Phoenix. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine being married to someone who\u2019s not an actor,\u201d says Mara. \u201cIt\u2019s such a specific experience.\u201d <\/p>\n

Later this year, the sisters will star in their first film together. In Werner Herzog\u2019s Bucking Fastard, the siblings play identical twins whose minds are so enmeshed that they speak in unison and have the same dreams. They also love the same man. Working together was completely comfortable. \u201cTo put it plainly, it felt like home,\u201d says Mara. \u201cYou have all this shared history to draw from. It\u2019s impossible to make up; it\u2019s so deep, and there\u2019s nothing like it. I can\u2019t imagine doing that role with somebody else.\u201d <\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t say it was ever competitive between us \u2013 I don\u2019t think she would say that either<\/p>\n

Mara on auditioning for the same roles as her sister Rooney<\/p>\n

Mara and Rooney are not twins, but they do possess some of that preternatural intuition that comes with sharing a womb. \u201cIt was funny, when we were filming, we would randomly test each other to think of a number and not tell the other one to see if we thought of the same number,\u201d says Mara. And did they ever get it right? \u201cAll the time! So creepy.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s taken decades for the sisters to work together. Truthfully, it was less about finding the right time than it was about finding the right project. \u201cWe\u2019d been sent things over the years that weren\u2019t right for various reasons,\u201d says Mara. \u201cOne of the main reasons being that, you know, again, it\u2019s rare to find a script that has two leads that are both female, and both interesting. We really did have to wait to find something that had equal opportunity.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mara was 22 and already a working actor by the time her sister followed her into the business. There was never any sense of rivalry, she insists. \u201cI was just excited that she was going to be doing the same thing as me,\u201d she says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say it was ever competitive between us \u2013 I don\u2019t think she would say that either \u2013 but we were up for similar roles, for sure. Not all the time, but often enough.\u201d Even then, there was never any bad blood. \u201cI felt that we were so different in so many ways that if one of us got a role, it just wouldn\u2019t have made sense for the other person anyway. So it wasn\u2019t that complicated.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"SistersSisters Rooney and Kate pictured together in 2018 (Getty)<\/p>\n

Speaking to Mara, it becomes clear that she was always going to be an actor \u2013 that her skill on screen is matched by a steely determination off it. Any rejection she faced, she knew, was part of the game. \u201cThat was going to be a reality no matter what; I was always most confident in knowing that was what I wanted to do the most,\u201d she says. \u201cIt can still hurt, for sure, but my perspective has changed a lot over the years, and having kids and a family, I have things that are more important to me and that fulfil me in another way. So it definitely hurts less, matters less, but no, it can definitely still be brutal.\u201d <\/p>\n

Next up, Mara has her sights set on Broadway \u2013 which was, in fact, her goal all along, ever since her mum started taking her and her sister to the theatre as children. \u201cBack then I couldn\u2019t care less about TV or movies, but then I moved to LA and lived there for 22 years, so Broadway wasn\u2019t a possibility,\u201d she says. \u201cNow that I\u2019ve moved back to New York, I\u2019ve realised that the dream is still alive and well. I\u2019d love to do it just as much now as I did when I was nine.\u201d As for who she\u2019d like to work with, the Irish writer Martin McDonagh comes to mind. If anyone can make it happen, it\u2019s her; I would not be surprised to see a McDonagh-Mara billing in the next few years. <\/p>\n

\u2018Imperfect Women\u2019 is available to watch now on Apple TV+<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-369663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}