Don't you dare cast Carey Mulligan as 'the girlfriend' or 'the wife'

'This is the opportunity to play a fully rounded, flawed interesting person'

The past year has seen A-list actresses call for more (and better) roles for women, with actress Reese Witherspoon paving the way in her Primetime Emmy awards speech just months ago.

‘Bring women to the front of their own stories and make them the hero of their own stories,’ she announced to the crowd, before Nicole Kidman explained how their support led to each other's success:

‘This is a friendship that created opportunities,' she explained. 'It created opportunities out of frustration because we weren’t getting offered great roles. So now, more great roles for women, please.’

Since Reese and Nicole took their stand on stage, increasing numbers of A-list women have been calling for better female roles, from Gal Gadot to Keira Knightley.

The latest high profile name to add her voice to the chorus is actress Carey Mulligan, who recently addressed the issue in an interview with the BBC, explaining how television is enabling her to play the roles she was never able to in film.

‘I think for the most of female actresses I know it’s just about going where the better writing is,’ the 32-year-old actress explained. ‘Films have tended to provide a lot for men in terms of great leading roles and not so much for women.’

She continued: ‘I think it’s been led by the writing and the opportunities particularly for women. That’s certainly the case for me, I just want to play the most interesting, complicated real person and interesting complicated real people in film are really, really rare.’

‘I think essentially following great writing, trying to play real people and not play the girlfriend, the wife. I’ve done that a lot and it’s not fun and this is the opportunity to play a fully rounded, flawed interesting person.’

We can’t wait to see what Carey does next.