Carey’s role was Far From the glamour of Hollywood

Carey Mulligan has worked with Hollywood heartthrobs Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Fassbender and Ryan Gosling in recent years but she didn’t get as “hands on” with any of them as she did one of her co-stars, a sheep, during filming Far From The Madding Crowd.

Carey plays Bathsheba Everdene in the latest screen adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic 19th Century novel.

It’s the story of a strong-willed, young woman who inherits her father’s farm and, much against the conventions of the time, decides she can do without a husband to manage her affairs.

For those that saw Carey last year as the glamorous Daisy Buchanan in the lavish adaptation of The Great Gatsby, getting down and dirty on a farm wouldn’t appear to come naturally to her.

But the 29-year-old actress has farming in her blood.

“My grandmother lived in Wales and we had relatives who were farmers,” recalls Carey. “So I already knew how to milk a cow as I’d done it as a kid. There is a sort of knack to it.”

Carey’s comfort around livestock stretches to helping out a friend to shear their herd of sheep the week before starting her latest film.

“I wasn’t actually shearing, as it’s really difficult,” she says, “but I was bagging up the wool.

“I live in the country now and know a lot of people who farm. It is not unfamiliar territory to me so when it came to filming I really wanted to get involved with the sheep even though the insurance people were worried the sheep might kick us and break our legs.

“When it came to shooting a scene in the sheep dip, at one point they were going to have this fake sheepskin thing but I said, ‘No, we’ve got to have the real thing.’

“I always wanted Bathsheba to get dirty, and dig holes, and work properly. That is what she does and who she is.”

The story of Bathsheba Everdene remains a favourite on the school syllabus and with film directors 140 years after it was first published.

A 1968 film version starred Julie Christie and Terence Stamp. ITV made a rare foray into costume drama with a one-hour film version with Paloma Baeza and Nathaniel Parker that aired in 1998.

“She is a modern woman,” Carey says as to the story’s continued popularity. “I think it is an extraordinary feat by Hardy to write somebody like that.

“It isn’t a story about a woman trying to find a husband. This is not a Jane Austen novel. The story starts with her turning down a proposal from a hunk. I like that.”

The man rebuffed is farmer Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), but Bathsheba also has to contend with the attentions of both William Boldwood, a middle-aged country gentleman played by Michael Sheen, and Sergeant Troy, a dashing soldier, played by Tom Sturridge.

Carey herself is married to musician Marcus Mumford, lead singer of Mumford & Sons.

The pair were childhood pen pals but lost touch and reconnected as adults. They married in 2012, shortly after Carey had received the second BAFTA nomination of her short career for her performance as a single mum in Drive.

She had become something of an overnight sensation three years before, winning a BAFTA and earning an Oscar nomination for her role as Jenny in An Education.

Her next film sees her star with Meryl Streep and Helena Bonham Carter in Suffragette, which charts the rise of the law-changing women’s movement at the turn of the 20th Century. Mulligan plays a fictional character, though the story is populated with important historical figures, such as Emily Davison and Emmeline Pankhurst.

“You meet real-life characters like Emily and Emmeline and it takes you through about a year of history in the women’s movement,” Mulligan explains.

Raised in Surrey and enjoying a “lovely, middle-class childhood,” Carey isn’t afraid to use her position in a political way.

Last year she became an ambassador for the War Child charity and visited the Democratic Republic of the Congo to raise awareness of the plight of the youngest victims of the country’s 17 year-long civil war.

“There are two things that I feel passionate about, care for the elderly (Carey became an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society after her grandmother was struck down with the disease] and protecting children.

“So I wanted to work with a child-protection charity and my brother’s connection to War Child [Owain was a captain in the Army who served in Iraq and Afghanistan] was a way into working with them.

“They are brilliant and they need lots of help and money.”