Kate Mara’s Keeping Busy: Mara admits it’s been a very busy year career-wise. “It's been a busy year, but I never really feel like, ‘Oh, this is going to be the year.’ I don't feel that right now. I just feel really happy about that I've had the opportunity to work so much. I like to work. I really like to work, but I also am really picky normally about a script and don't really like everything. And so yeah, I feel lucky that I've found so many roles that I respond to - in this past year especially. I feel really good right now about where my career is at this moment.
I just finished a film last week called Transsiberian, totally different than anything I've ever done. It's an independent film with Woody Harrelson and Sir Ben Kingsley. It's a big ensemble — Emily Mortimer, it's such a really interesting cast. We shot it in Lithuania and the crew was Spanish and the director Brad Anderson is American. Woody and I are both Americans, but Emily Mortimer and Sir Ben Kingsley are both British. And then there's Eduardo Noriega who's the other guy in it who's Spanish. And then all these Lithuanian extras. It was the most bizarre set to be on, but a really interesting dark sort of thriller.”
So is it Ben or Sir Ben when you’re working alongside Ben Kingsley? “I never had the guts to ask him. I just called him Sir Ben. I just felt out of respect feel I should call him that. I didn't want to take a chance.”
Mara continued, “In the film I play this sort of…she's sort of goth, I guess. She looks goth. She's kind of mysterious. She doesn't say much which actually was really hard being in. We were there for a while and when you read a script like that, she surprises you, there's a few big surprises in the film about my character which I thought it was really cool. She's dark and doesn't talk much and you keep wondering the whole time what's her deal? But then when I was actually there, it was so much harder than I thought because just being in a scene and not having to say anything is so much harder than having to say a million things. It's like, ‘Okay, the next scene, I say one word again,’ and it became very difficult. But it was fun. I'd never played a role like her before. She was sort of this lost soul. But I don't know what I'm doing next. While I was there, I thought, ‘I'm going to take a break.’ I did three movies in a row. And now, of course, I'm home and I'm like, ‘Oh, I could work next week.’”
