Carey Mulligan wants to see women "fail" in movies.
The 32-year-old actress is constantly searching for projects that feature "realistic portrayals of women" and doesn’t understand why producers try to cut out bad behaviour in her characters if they are not traditional villains as she believes that it’s important to show their "flaws".
Speaking at Variety’s Women in Motion forum at the Cannes Film Festival, she said: "It is so rare to see a woman allowed to fail on screen. Women are censored.
"I have worked on jobs before where my character, originally in the novel or in the original script, has behaved in a way that is morally objectionable or unpleasant and we have played those scenes on set, we have acted them, and then when it’s come to the edit they have been cut out.
"And I have asked why they’ve gone and been told, ‘The audience really doesn’t like it when she’s not very nice.’ And I think that’s such a misconception. I don’t think that’s true. Unless we show someone’s flaws, we are not showing a full person.
"When women are on screen, often if they make mistakes or they are failing, they are the villain."
The ‘Wildlife’ actress – who has Evelyn, two, and a six-month-old child whose name and gender are not known to the public, with her husband Marcus Mumford – finds it bizarre that women are rarely seen having affairs on screen, despite being as unfaithful as men in real life, but male characters are "celebrated" even when they are flawed.
She added: "Men can be celebrated in spite of all of their flaws. Whereas you very rarely see women on screen being unfaithful, but of course it happens all the time in the way men are unfaithful all the time.
"That’s something that happens all the time but we don’t want to see it."
Carey Mulligan doesn’t want flawless characters
