Carey Mulligan may be a great actress, but it turns out, she’s not such a great driver. The “Mudbound” star was on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” when she recounted how she has failed her driving test five times.
The 32-year-old Brit insists she’s not a terrible driver, revealing she has her license to drive in the U.S., but not in her native England. “It’s way harder in England! Over there I failed. Here, it’s easy. I did it here [in the U.S.] it was a piece of cake,” she told Kimmel. “You literally drive around the block and they give you a license.”
The actress insisted she is an “excellent driver,” but Kimmel was doubtful. “I don’t think you are. Maybe average, but even then, I don’t think so,” he said.
“It’s a pressure thing. I am an excellent driver,” she promises. “Then I get in a test environment, someone has a clipboard, and my mind explodes. I cannot do anything and I make mistakes.”
Mulligan recounted all the times she tried – and failed – to get her license for Kimmel.
“Test number one, I’m 23,” she recalls. “I’m filming this film called ‘Never Let Me Go‘, and the director is adamant that I have to drive a car. It has to be a manual car, no question. I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s hard. Can I not do [automatic]?'” she says. “‘No, it has to be a manual car, and you have five days to learn.’ I do my five-day intensive thing. I get to the end of the five days and I take the test, and I fail within 90 seconds of leaving the test centre. I’m going up the hill, and I mess up the thing, and I stall and I start rolling back down the hill, and there’s a Range Rover behind me. The instructor freaks out and does the emergency brakes. I went, ‘Okay, well that’s done.’ Then I get on set and they have an automatic car! I’m like, ‘Buddy!’ So, that was awash.”
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Years later, she attempted to get her license again.
“Years later, I’m pregnant with my first child. I get quite far into the pregnancy and I think, ‘Oh, God, I must learn to drive now because I’m going to be a mother. This is irresponsible,” Mulligan says. “I’m nine months pregnant, I book my test – and I fail. Then I book another, 10 days before I give birth, and I fail that as well.”
Not one to give up, Mulligan once again attempts to get her license while pregnant with her second child with her husband, Mumford & Sons’ Marcus Mumford. “I think, ‘I have two children; I should really get a driver’s license,'” she explains. “So, I wait until I’m nine months pregnant and I take one test and I fail. And then it’s my fifth test. My husband comes to the test centre. He’s got the bottle of champagne and he’s ready, and it’s the saddest thing he’s ever seen,” she says. “I hoist myself out of the car, crying, with this huge bump and my little sheet with this red cross on it. He sort of slowly puts the champagne away.”
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The failure came as a shock to the pregnant star. “All of them I knew [I failed], except the last one, where I really thought I’d nailed it. That was even worse. Like, if you know, it’s fine. But I was like, ‘This is it.’ And it wasn’t,” she adds.
“Mudbound” is set to be released on Netflix on Nov. 17.
