Carey Mulligan's family helps her realise work isn't the 'be-all and end-all'

Carey Mulligan's family has helped her come to the realisation that work isn't the "be-all and end-all".

In a new interview with America's InStyle magazine, the Promising Young Woman star, who shares Evelyn, four, and Wilfred, two, with singer husband Marcus Mumford, admitted that she has felt more balanced since she accepted that there are matters in life that are more important than her job.

"I have the best job in the world, but I've learned that it isn't the be-all and end-all," she explained. "As someone who finds the public side of this quite intimidating, having a family has made me feel that if I wear a dress that people hate, or if I say something stupid, or if people don't like a film I've been in, it doesn't matter as much as it used to. It's freeing, in a way."

Since making her film debut in Pride & Prejudice in 2005, Carey has starred in countless critically-acclaimed movies, including An Education, Never Let Me Go, and The Great Gatsby.

Reflecting on the trajectory of her career, the screen star admitted she gets "whiplash" thinking about where she's come from.

"My dream was to be a working actress, but my expectation was maybe I'll be in (British TV dramas) Casualty or The Bill," she said. "And then suddenly I got really lucky and just kept it up. For me, ambition is testing myself.

"As an actor, you're always trying to prove that you can do different things. I have a fear of recognition and celebrity, though, so I don't have ambition to be well known. But I want to be really good at my job. I always want the next thing I do to be more nuanced, more interesting, more complicated."