Awards Shows (Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, SAGs, tributes)

At the Golden Globes  (January 2012)

Winner of Virtuoso Award at the 27th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival (February 2012) 

With Demian Bichir, Shailene Woodley and Andy Serkis

Oscar luncheon (February 2012)

Portrait taken by Douglas Kirkland

With George Clooney and Jonah Hill

Preparations for group photo (Rooney standing next to Meryl Streep)

At the 68th Cannes Film Festival (May 2015)

On wining Best Actress in Cannes

Exclusive Cannes interview

Telluride tribute (September 2015)

A Tribute to Rooney Mara

Rooney Mara, just 30 years old, may seem young to be considered

among cinema’s finest actors. But in films including THE GIRL WITH THE

DRAGON TATTOO (for which she was nominated for an Oscar), AIN’T THEM

BODIES SAINTS and, now, CAROL (Best Actress, Cannes), Mara’s talented

performances, rich with layers and complexity, reveal an old-soul wisdom.

Her steadfast dedication to her craft has allowed her, in a relatively short

period of time, to emerge as a sophisticated, world-class artist.

The third of four children, Mara was born and raised in Bedford, New York,

enamored of Broadway musicals and classic films. After graduating from

NYU, having studied psychology and social policy, she founded a non-profit

dedicated to supporting struggling residents of a Nairobi neighborhood.

Her start as a professional actress came in television—ER and Law & Order:

Special Victims Unit—and independent productions—THE WINNING SEASON,

DARE, YOUTH IN REVOLT, TANNER HALL (all 2009)—followed with a lead role

in the 2010 remake of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.

Her brief, unforgettable turn in the opening sequence of David Fincher’s

THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010), as the girlfriend of the self-absorbed

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, was a breakthrough, and marked

the beginning of her creative partnership with David Fincher. In their

adaptation of the Stieg Larsson bestselling saga THE GIRL WITH THE

DRAGON TATTOO (2011), Mara scored the coveted role of Lisbeth Salander,

the fiercely intelligent punk-renegade computer hacker. The part demanded

a radical physical transformation, handling scenes of brutal sexual violence,

and navigating twisted historical intrigue, with the affectless poise and

cerebral cool of the novel’s iconic character.

Next, she portrayed a determined, broken-hearted lover with steel in the

acclaimed AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS (2011) and, in Steven Soderbergh’s

Hitchcockian psychological drama SIDE EFFECTS (2013), played a duplicitous,

clinically depressed woman and calculated accomplice in a murder plot. Since

then, Mara has elevated an eclectic slate of films, including Spike Jonze’s HER,

as the ex-wife of a reclusive writer; Stephen Daldry’s Brazilian favela thriller

TRASH (2013), playing an American activist who helps three boys in trouble

with a corrupt politician; and of course, Todd Haynes’s exquisite CAROL.

Mara plays a young shop girl and aspiring photographer who falls in love with

an older and sophisticated woman, a wife and mother who has managed to

keep her illicit passions concealed under the veil of acceptable womanhood.

With its eloquent stillness and expressive silences, the film creates a perfect

space for Mara’s gifts at understated emotion. Her performance amplifies the

force of the unspoken in the film, and she reveals the gravitas housed in her

petite frame and “snowy solitary face” (to recall Barthes famous essay on

Greta Garbo)—a face that is “an Idea,” a face that itself is a screen.

–Mara Fortes

The program includes a selection of clips followed by the presentation of the Silver

Medallion, an onstage interview led by John Horn (Friday) and Davia Nelson

(Saturday), followed by CAROL (see opposite page), shown in its entirety.