Carey Mulligan beats Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley as she secures £2million role in The Great Gatsby remake

Success: Carey Mulligan has been cast as the female lead in a new Hollywood remake of The Great Gatsby

British actress Carey Mulligan has won a starring role in a Hollywood remake of The Great Gatsby.
The 25-year-old will play Daisy Buchanan in a forthcoming multi-million pound adaptation of the classic F Scott Fitzgerald novel.
Miss Mulligan beat off competition from big name stars including , Natalie Portman, and Keira Knightley for the £2million part.
She is set to star opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, who is in final talks to play self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby whose success and subsequent fall from grace mirrors America’s slump after the excesses of the 1920s into the Great Depression.
Tobey Maguire will play Nick Carraway, narrator of the novel.
Director Baz Luhrmann said he chose Mulligan because she gave a perfect audition.
He telephoned her to give her news while she was at a fashion awards ceremony in the U.S. and she is believed to have broken down in tears at the news.
Luhrman said: ‘Regarding the role of Daisy Buchanan, I was privileged to explore the character with some of the world’s most talented actresses, each one bringing their own particular interpretation, all of which were legitimate and exciting.’
‘However, specific to this particular production of The Great Gatsby, I was thrilled to pick up the phone an hour ago to the young Oscar-nominated British actress Carey Mulligan and say to her, “Hello, Daisy Buchanan”.’
Miss Mulligan has enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame – making the transition from barmaid and jobbing actress to Hollywood starlet in just a few years.
Her performance in 2009 coming-of-age film An Education, which was based on journalist Lynn Barber’s memoirs of her seduction as a schoolgirl by an older man and set in 1960s suburbia, made her a household name.

Stiff competition: Carey beat stars including and Keira Knightley for the role