Kate Mara needs a phone charger – portable, preferably. Procuring one from her team, the actor walks towards me at the back of Claridge’s restaurant, the click-clack of high heels echoing off the marble floor. Introductions are made; hands are shaken.
The actor has a no-nonsense air about her that feels very New York. She grew up an hour north of the city, where she lives now with her husband, the British actor Jamie Bell, and their three children. But beneath the professionalism and the perfectly pressed all-white outfit, Mara, 43, can be candid in a way that catches you off guard – flashes of vulnerability that instantly endear you to her. “It’s 90 per cent rejection still to this day,” she says, laughing. “I’ll see something and ask, ‘Oh, how come I never got that script?’ And my agent will say, ‘We tried. They’re not interested.’”
