It took Rooney Mara two and a half months and five screen tests to land the sought-after role of Lisbeth Salander.
The competition for the fierce heroine of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” included some of the biggest names in Hollywood. The director, David Fincher, is well known for his extreme attention to detail — which Mara had witnessed firsthand in her small but memorable performance in his “The Social Network.”
He shot her largest scene, the opening verbal volley between Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his girlfriend (Mara), in 99 takes.
To become Lisbeth, Mara had to prove she shared the character’s mettle.
“It was like, I couldn’t imagine what I would be doing if I wasn’t doing that,” says Mara. “I couldn’t see forward in my life without doing it.”
It was her tenacity, ultimately, that won over Fincher, who, in an unusually drawn-out audition process, also considered Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman and Carey Mulligan, among others.
“She just wasn’t going to be denied,” Fincher says of Mara. “And that indomitability was so important to Lisbeth. Forget 98 pounds, forget black hair, forget the tattoos, forget the piercings. I needed somebody who wasn’t going to stop. She just kept going.”
For her effort, Mara was rewarded with a clearly life-changing experience making the film with Fincher in Sweden; generally rave reviews for her version of the iconic character first played by Noomi Rapace in the original Swedish films; an entry to movie stardom and, most recently, a Golden Globe nomination.
In a recent interview at a New York hotel with paparazzi lurking outside, Mara, 26, didn’t give off the impression of an actress having her Big Moment. Instead, she exuded an almost monotone calm, already nostalgic for her journey on “Dragon Tattoo” and eager to finish the global, red-carpet marketing of the film.
“I spent over a year at 100 miles per hour, just working on pure adrenaline for a lot of it,” she says. “And it’s hard to come down off of that. For someone like me, who really thrives off of having something to focus on, it’s hard to lose that.”
Mara, certainly, wouldn’t seem a natural for Lisbeth, the hard, androgynous computer hacker. She was raised in the wealthy Westchester County hamlet of Bedford, N.Y., the daughter of Tim Mara, an executive for the New York Giants. Her name (Patricia Rooney Mara, in full) comes from her two great grandfathers: Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney, Sr. and Giants founder Tim Mara — historic NFL families, both.
“People always want to know about that and ask about that, but it’s not something I thought about very much growing up,” says Mara. “I wasn’t like some spoiled little football brat.”
A film changed everything
Though she had performed in school plays and in some student films at New York University, it wasn’t until she was around 20 that Mara began auditioning for films. She played small parts in films such as 2009’s “Youth in Revolt” and starred in the 2010 remake of “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
“The Social Network” was a turning point.
“It just felt different than anything else I had done,” she says. “After that, I got really picky. I didn’t work for a year. I didn’t work until I got this part because I was just trying to find something that I was really passionate about.”
The casting process for “Dragon Tattoo” was very public. Though Mara read much of the online commentary, she spent the audition process as “a shut-in,” smoking, reading about and researching the part, and trying to lose weight.
Whether the franchise will be continued with two more films remains to be seen. It opened over Christmas with a modest $13 million in domestic box office. Mara is to co-star in Terence Malick’s planned “Lawless,” but she remains plainly enamored of Fincher: “I just trusted him completely,” she says. “I would have done anything for him, probably to a fault.”
For Mara, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” was an education.
“I felt like I was going to school,” says Mara. “I had motorcycle for two hours, then I went to dialect for two hours. It was like going to different classes every day.”
