Patricia Rooney Mara was born April 17, 1985 in Bedford, New York. Her father is the senior vice president of player personnel for the New York Giants (his family founded the team) and her mother was a part-time real estate agent (her family founded the Pittsburgh Steelers). Mara has said that football is "the glue that holds our family together."
Source: Vogue, New York Post
She began to go by her middle name (also her mother's maiden name) Rooney because she "liked it better." "I think it’s a really cool name, and I never really liked my first name, Patricia. A lot of people in my family [both her dad and younger brother] go by their middle name, so it was the natural course," she told the Wall Street Journal.
Source: WSJ
She has three siblings: an older brother, a younger brother, and an older sister, Kate, who is also an actress and has appeared in "House of Cards" and "The Martian."
Source: Vogue
Mara played Juliet in a high school production of "Romeo and Juliet," but wanted to go to college, so she spent a year at George Washington University before transferring to NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study where she studied nonprofits and psychology. While in school, she traveled to Kenya where she visited Kibera, a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. That experience led her to found Faces of Kibera in 2007, a charity to help the slum's orphans. The charity merged with Uweza Foundation, an organization to fight poverty within the slums, in 2011. Mara is the organization's president.
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Images of #hope: See Rooney Mara’s stirring #SouthSudan photo diary in @VanityFair http://t.co/8AGGUVWM8W pic.twitter.com/wzVrr8C21n
She began to audition for roles when she was 19. Her first professional role was as a bully on a season-seven episode of "Law and Order: SVU."
She followed up that role with small appearances in "Women's Murder Club" and "ER." She appeared in five movies in 2009, including "Youth in Revolt" and "Tanner Hall." Her "Tanner Hall" costar, Brie Larson, is also nominated for an Oscar this year.
In 2010, she starred in "A Nightmare on Elm Street," a reboot of the franchise. Mara has said that she "hated" the experience and thought about leaving acting. “It left me thinking, 'If this is what is available to me, then I don’t necessarily want to be an actress.' But then I got the script for 'The Social Network.'"
Source: Vogue
She appeared as the girlfriend who breaks up with Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) at the start of the movie. That was her first time working with director David Fincher.
Mara broke out in Hollywood the following year with her portrayal of Lisbeth Salandar in Fincher's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," based on Stieg Larsson's best-selling novel of the same name.
She went through a complete physical transformation — losing weight, cutting her hair and shaving the sides, dying it black, bleaching her eyebrows blonde, and dressing boyishly. She also got multiple ear piercings, as well as pierced her eyebrow, nose, lip, and nipple.
The role earned her a best actress Oscar nomination and Golden Globe nomination. Though some initial sequels were planned to complete Larsson's trilogy, none ever came to fruition, but Mara said she would return to the role if the movies happened.
Source: E! Online
In 2013, she appeared in the drama "Ain't Them Bodies Saints," with Casey Affleck, and the psychological thriller "Side Effects," alongside Jude Law, Channing Tatum, and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
She also appeared in Spike Jonze's Oscar-winning film "Her," as the ex-wife to Joaquin Phoenix's character.
In 2014, Mara was cast as Tiger Lily in the Warner Bros. film "Pan," a reimagining of J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan." Tiger Lily was written as a Native American character, so Mara's casting was met with widespread criticism. Mara said she "felt really bad" about the criticism. "When I met with Joe and heard what his plans for it were, it was something I really wanted to be a part of. But I totally sympathize with why people were upset and feel really bad about it," she told People.
Source: Entertainment Weekly, People
She received a second Oscar nomination this year for "Carol," an adaptation of the novel "The Price of Salt." She plays a young photographer who strikes up an affair with an older woman played by Cate Blanchett. She also earned her first BAFTA nomination for her role.
Mara has five live-action films slated for this year: "Una," based on David Harrower's play "Blackbird"; "The Secret Scripture," based on a novel of the same name; "Lion," based on the memoir "A Long Way Home"; Charlie McDowell's sci-fi romance "The Discovery"; and an untitled Terrence Malick musical film, also starring Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, Michael Fassbender, Benicio del Toro, Val Kilmer, and her "Carol" costar Cate Blanchett.
She got to work with Patti Smith on the Terrence Malick film. Mara spoke with Annie Clark (known as the music artist St. Vincent) for Interview and said,"We had scenes together where she's showing me stuff on the guitar, and then she does a show in Austin. They really wanted me to go out on stage and play with her, which I refused to do. But she put a chair on stage for me to sit and played a song to me. It was amazing. She was playing herself but giving my character all this advice."
Source: Interview
