Kate Mara has built a career playing complicated characters. She has been a scorned lover turned vindictive ghost on "American Horror Story," a calculating, ambitious reporter on "House of Cards" and a predatory educator on "A Teacher." And in her new FX limited series "Class of '09," she gets to play three incarnations of the same woman at different phases of her FBI career, from a career-jumping nurse to a futuristic veteran with a difficult past — and a robotic eye.
Yet, Mara says she didn't set out to specifically take on dark, secretive roles. "Sometimes you just need a job because you haven't worked in a while and you've got kids to feed," she told me on "Salon Talks." "Or you're antsy and just need that creative outlet, or you are looking for something really specific, or if you've had an experience that wasn't so good and you want a palate cleanser." (She may have been alluding here to filming 2015's "Fantastic Four," which she's referred to as "a horrible experience.")
