Kate and Rooney Mara have spent the last fifteen years making an indelible mark on the film and television industry. The two sisters have impeccable taste when it comes to projects, behave with more decorum and grace than most and have deep, deep wells of talent.
Kate Mara’s been active since she was a teenager, wasting no time booking juicy television roles on shows like Nip/Tuck, American Horror Story, and of course, House of Cards. Since her departure from the Netflix show, she’s fully transitioned to film and shows no signs of stopping. Rooney’s story is similar, but different.
Barely 15 minutes of screentime in David Fincher’s The Social Network was enough to put relative newcomer Rooney Mara in the running for the titular role in his Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Not only did she nab the part of Lisbeth Salander, she also got her first of two Oscar nominations. Since then, she’s gone on to give groundbreaking performances in Side Effects, Her and the film that grabbed her a second Oscar nom, Carol.
The novelty of their mutual success automatically makes us curious about the upbringing that produced such talented women.
Here are 15 Crazy Facts About Kate And Rooney Mara's Childhood.
THEY COME FROM TWO BILLIONAIRE FOOTBALL FAMILIES
When you think of the Rooney sisters, your first thought is probably The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or House of Cards or one of the other dozens of films and television shows in which the Mara sisters have appeared. Unless you’re really up on your Mara trivia, you probably had no idea their family business is actually football – times two!
Their great-grandfather was Timothy James Mara, who founded the New York Giants.
He was born into poverty on New York’s Lower East Side, eventually got into bookmaking and eventually got the opportunity to by the team for $500 ($12,000ish today) according to the New York Daily News. The rest is history -- the Mara family has run the team since its inception and continues to do so to this day. Kate and Rooney’s father is Timothy Christopher Mara, who’s served as the vice president of player evaluation, and their uncle, John Mara, is the president and CEO of the team.
As if that weren’t enough, their mother, Kathleen McNulty Rooney hails from the family that founded an equally prestigious football dynasty you may have heard of – the Pittsburgh Steelers. Their maternal great-grandfather, Art Rooney, founded the team and their uncle, Art Rooney II, is the owner and president of the team.
BUT STILL THEY WENT TO PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL
This fact isn’t so much crazy as it is crazy normal. Whereas most children of wealthy families tend to be sent off to exclusive private schools before getting into even more exclusive universities, the Mara sisters were different. They attended their local public institution, Fox Lane High School. They were brought up in Bedford, New York near many of their relatives.
Kate Mara acted while at Fox Lane and managed to graduate a year early in order to attend NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts. Rooney graduated with her class in 2003, but didn’t involve herself in any theatrical production while there, unlike her older sister.
Interestingly, when Kate needed to call upon her high school experiences for her film Ten Years, she sent her brother back to school instead. When it came time for her ten year reunion at Fox Lane, the Bedford native, who’s claimed to have always been very shy, declined the invitation. However, she didn’t want to lose the opportunity to gain valuable research about the experience, so she sent her brother instead.
Marisa Jaret Winkour, Tony Award winner for Broadway's Hairspray, graduated from the same high school, where she was the captain of her soccer team.
PEOPLE THOUGHT ROONEY WAS STUCK UP IN HIGH SCHOOL
Given what a talented actress Rooney is, it’d be folly to assume she was just like the icy Lisbeth Salander who put her on the map in Hollywood. The actress has admitted to being shy like her sister, as well as being particularly sensitive to the energy of others. She touched on this fact when speaking to Vogue in 2013 about how she plans to one day live in New York City again: "I feel like in the city you can be very alone and disappear. And so I love that because I like to be alone a lot. I think part of the reason is I’m like a sponge. If I’m in a group, I get exhausted immediately picking up everyone’s feelings."
That kind of empathy can be difficult to deal with as an adult, so imagine how much fun it is to deal with as a teen when everyone that surrounds you is running around at some kind of 11.
When questioned about her perceived aloof personality by T Magazine, Mara expounded on her rather isolated high school experience: "In high school, people thought I was stuck-up because I didn’t talk to anyone. It was just because I was shy and scared, but I think because I’m super-self-possessed that it doesn’t come across as scared so much as stuck-up. I would hear what people thought and be like, ‘No! I’m actually nice!’"
Still waters do run deep (and nice).
THEY ACTED TOGETHER JUST ONCE (AND IT WAS ROONEY’S LAST PLAY)
While Kate chased as much theater as she could while trying to convince her parents to help her get an agent, Rooney generally steered clear of acting until she reached adulthood. The key word there is “generally."
The Rooney sisters have acted together exactly one time and that was in a community theater production of The Wizard of Oz.
It was one of two times Kate would be in the play, and this time she was the Scarecrow. Her sister had a much smaller part – a crow with only one line. Unfortunately, the young actress got a serious attack of stage fright that’s turned her off of theater ever since. Speaking to Vogue in 2013, she detailed the experience: "I was so horrified to be out in front of everyone that I couldn’t remember my one little line . . . and that was the end of my thespian career.” She hasn’t ruled out doing it again, but she still feels that old intimidation: I would like to do a play someday, but I find it really scary. I hate being onstage.”
It’s just one of the interesting similarities and differences between the two sisters that while both claim to be very shy: Kate feels comfortable doing theater and Rooney does not.
KATE SANG THE ANTHEM AT GIANTS GAMES
While Kate Mara hasn’t been a professional singer for much of her career, she did do several musicals in amateur theater while she was growing up. That may have been what provoked her grandfather, Wellington Mara, to ask her to sing the Star Spangled Banner at a Giants game when she was just 14.
During an appearance on morning talk show Live With Kelly and Ryan, she explained that it was sheer stupidity that lead her to agree to the terrifying undertaking. When I was like 14, my grandpa, you know, would ask, ‘Will you sing the national anthem?' And to me, I was so young, I didn’t realize how insane and nerve wracking that was.”
As luck would have it, the Giants won the first game she sang at, so Kate's singing became somewhat of a lucky charm.
She performed for several more games before eventually realizing how uncomfortable the pressure was. She said in the same Live appearance that she will not be doing again, but maybe if the Giants hit a serious losing streak, she could be coaxed back for the sake of the team. To be clear football gods and Giants fans, no one here is hoping that happens, just that if it did, maybe that’s a way Kate could be persuaded back into this particular spotlight.
ROONEY MADE NO NEW FRIENDS AT UNIVERSITY
Both Mara sisters are pretty protective of their social circles, which is in keeping with their family’s general desire to stay out of the limelight. Kate admitted to having basically no actress friends until her sister joined the profession and while she definitely had close friends in high school, she was so focused on her career that she admits to hating school, and took it as a sign of her own ambition that she was willing to even attend college, though she never wound up going.
Rooney was similarly insular when she eventually wound up in New York to attend NYU. Like her sister, she knew almost no one when she moved to the city after spending a year at George Washington University. Thankfully, there was a group of close friends from high school that had also wound up there and provided a really, really nice network of support – the women she met had also all left their first choice institutions in search of something a little less traditional.
She said to Vogue that "because of that, and because I wasn’t that interested in college, I didn’t meet one new person—I’m not even exaggerating!” It might have been a little too comfortable, but clearly not creating an entirely new social group in NYC didn’t hurt her future all that much.
KATE COULDN'T MAKE FRIENDS IN THE ACTING BUSINESS
Kate Mara was the first Mara sister to start professionally acting. She got her first agent at 14 and has worked pretty consistently since. Her first major gigs were recurring roles as teenagers on the WB’s Everwood and FX’s Nip/Tuck.
She remained pretty isolated from other teen actors until she’d actually reached her twenties and her sister joined her in the same career.
It took Rooney a few more years before she decided to follow in her sister’s footsteps, but once she did, the two put their family kinship to good use.
Speaking to ABC prior to the release of her 2017 film Megan Leavey, she had this to say about how lucky she felt that she could share the unique experience with her sister: "So from the time I was 14 ‘til, I think, my sister started acting when I was 20, 21, I didn’t have someone to share this craziness with. So when she became an actor, we actually lived together in my apartment for the first year or two… We would both go on auditions and come home and talk about the terror of certain auditions and funny stories and so it just became something super special that you can actually bond with a sibling with which is very rare."
Given how women are so encouraged to compete with one another in the entertainment industry, it must’ve been a boon to both sisters to have someone they trusted in their respective corners.
ROONEY DIDN'T WANT TO BE A CHILD STAR
Despite their common pursuit of acting careers, Rooney Mara took her sweet time following in her sister’s footsteps. While Kate knew she wanted to pursue acting by the age of nine and then went on to get her professional start by the age of 14, Rooney didn’t start pursuing the same path until after college. Following her graduation from Fox Lane High School, she bounced around to a few different colleges – she spent four months with the Traveling School, a year at George Washington University for a year before settling on a more open education at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
It wasn’t until after then that she started pursuing acting, a passion she gained when her mother exposed the sisters to musicals and classic films while they were growing up. According to an interview with the New York Times, that had always been her plan "I just knew I didn’t want to be a child actor. I knew I wanted to go to school and wanted to start when I was older, so I would be taken seriously."
Clearly Kate didn’t feel the same way, but it’s been nice for both of them that following their own paths led them to the same one.
THEIR FAMILY WAS VERY RELIGIOUS
While Rooney and Kate have remained quiet on the subject of their own religions, their family is made up of staunch Irish Catholics. Both their mother and father’s family’s hail from Ireland and they have both been Irish Catholics for generations. According to Gerald Eskenazi, speaking to Gotham Magazine, the family was “extremely religious—and I mean the going-to-mass every day kind.”
While neither Mara sister has confirmed that they are still religious today, Rooney abandoned going to Mass as soon as she got a car.
Speaking to Irish newspaper The Independent before the release of Mary Magdalene, she pointed out how she started dodging weekly Mass as soon as she was able: "I stopped going as soon as I got a car. Once I had my license I was like, 'I'm gonna go to the 12 o'clock, see you later' and I'd drive off somewhere to hide!"
However, she did go on to say that her religious upbringing informed her role as one of the Bible’s most debated people, and she emerged from the film with a newfound appreciation for the woman: "I'd grown up thinking this thing that everyone thinks about her, but there's no evidence whatsoever. I was shocked by that, and I began to realize that she was an incredible spiritual figure in her own right, and a kind of feminist figure as well, and I thought that her story really needed to be told."
THEIR FAMILY IS ENORMOUS
Unless you’re a football fan, odds are the only famous Maras you’d heard of were Kate and Rooney. However, they are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to members of their family.
The two women have a staggering 22 aunts and uncles and somewhere around 40 cousins.
Kate and Rooney only have two other siblings, brothers Daniel and Connor. Their father is one of 11 siblings, their great-grandfather Arthur was one of eight and their great-uncle Daniel Milton Rooney had nine children.
The two sides of their family tree are pretty populated with impressive historical figures as well. Their cousin, Tom Joseph Rooney is a Florida politician who served in the House of Representatives for Florida’s 16th district and has been one of the few members of the family outside of the sisters to act. He had a cameo as a farmer in the 2014 film Walt Before Mickey. His brother, Dan Rooney, has served as a representative for Florida’s 17th district.
The sisters’ great-uncle Dan Rooney was the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland from 2009 to 2012 in addition to his duties as president of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
THEIR MOM'S IMPACT
Kathleen Rooney Mara should be given a good deal of credit for inspiring her daughters’ passion for acting in film and theater. And both her daughters have done so on several different occasions, detailing how the part-time real estate agent took them to countless Broadway shows and constantly showed them classic movies. The musicals had an impact on both sisters, but only Kate would follow in those footsteps (at least in her early community theater days).
Rooney wasn’t quite so confident in her own voice to try her hand at Broadway like her sister (despite having seen Les Mis a handful of times). She explained to Vogue: "That’s actually why I started acting, just because I can’t really sing, so that was like my only way into that world that I love."
That’s far from the only thing Mara’s passed on to her daughters – they are, like her, serious philanthropists. The Daily Mail pictured them together at the Social Innovation Summit in 2012, where the younger Mara spoke about her Uweza Aid Foundation that helps people in Kibera, Kenya break the cycle of poverty.
Kate is very passionate about animal rights and The Bedford Voice reported that she and her sister worked long and hard with the Humane Society to get funding to care for a group of orangutans who’d been experimented on for human benefit and left largely abandoned after the work was done.
THEIR PARENTS PUT A HOLD ON KATE’S ACTING CAREER
Both Mara sisters have admitted to wanting to act for most of their lives, but they both decided to pursue it at different points in their lives. Younger sister Rooney took her time, graduated college, and explored different paths before eventually taking the plunge and moving out to Los Angeles like her sister had years earlier. Kate was a much different story.
Despite having admitted being painfully shy, she’d started doing plays and musicals when she was a pre-teen.
She’d begged her parents to let her start pursuing acting professionally at the age of 9, but they refused.
Speaking to the Independent, she showed that she had the determination to make it in this career even as a child: "I was nine years old when I started ‘the campaign’, and 14 when I got an agent. That’s five years of a lot of conversations. I did a lot of really bad community theatre so I think I proved I was very serious about it. I would leave misspelt notes on my mother’s pillow all the time.”
According to another interview given to NewJersey.com, at least some of those notes read: “Please help me find an agent!"
Luckily, despite the reticence her parents showed, Mara’s career hasn’t suffered, and she got a few years of experience hearing “No” before she started in on a profession that’s very fond of that word.
THEIR MYSTERIOUS FAMILY IS INTENSELY PRIVATE
America doesn’t have actual royalty, but that hasn’t stopped the us from raising wealthy family dynasties to the level of royalty in the public eye. The Kennedys, the Hiltons, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers – all of these families have fascinated the public with their extravagant and glamorous lifestyles, and members of these families have rarely shied away from the limelight. However, the Mara’s don’t fall into that category.
In comparison to other wealthy families of their ilk, the Maras (and the Rooneys) have remained pretty unassuming over the years. Rooney and Kate are the most mainstream recognizable members, but only because of their careers, and far less because of their ancestry.
No other members of their family have ever been the focus of major scandal and very little has been written about them books or gossip rags.
Given the negative effects that kind of attention can bring, it was probably a good decision.
David Patrick Columbia recalls meeting the Maras when he ran a shop in Greenwich, Connecticut and observed their reticence firsthand: "Some of the family members used to come in regularly when I had a clothing store in Greenwich, and I had little idea of what a big deal they were. The Kennedys crave attention, and then get destroyed by it. Whereas the Maras, with their background, have had a lot of chances to observe how being besieged by the public can be a pain. They’re not secretive, but they don’t want unnecessary attention, either."
NY-WHO?
Kate’s passion for musical theater began at a young age— when she finally did get her first agent, she insisted the woman only send her out on Broadway auditions. That turned out to be luckily naïve – there aren’t that many Broadway auditions for 14-year-old girls, so she also got sent out on television auditions and started working almost immediately. She still continued to sing and do musical theater, and eventually she nabbed a seriously clutch spot at NYU’s Tisch School of Performing Arts to study musical theater. Unfortunately for them, she started working before she could actually start classes and wound up deferring three years.
That said, in an LA Times article from 2007, she revealed that there probably aren’t any hurt feelings regarding her rejection of the prestigious program: "But I happened to get a few jobs before I started school and told them, 'Why should I go to school to learn something I'm already doing?' I deferred three or four years and they realized I was going to be OK."
As it turns out, one Mara sister did wind up attending NYU, just not for acting – Rooney graduated from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2010 after studying psychology, international social policy and nonprofits.
THEIR HOMETOWN WAS TINY
Kate and Rooney’s branch of the Mara family is centered in Bedford, New York. It’s a sleepy little suburb in Westchester County about 40 miles outside of Manhattan. Its population is less than 20,000, and its outfitted with the typical trappings of a well-preserved colonial town. Its major landmarks are buildings and homes that date back to its founding, as well as a small graveyard with some very, very old residents. The town was founded by Puritans in the late 17th century.
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the median income in Bedford is six figures, but it might surprise you to know that it’s only around $100,000 considering the amount of celebrities who do and have called it home. Martha Stewart lived there before and after her prison stay, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas (in one home before their separation and in another after their reconciliation), Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds have lived there since around 2012, as did Bea Arthur, Chevy Chase, Billy Baldwin and Richard Gere.
Not bad for a town that Rooney told the New York Times was pretty much “this one teeny little street with a general store and a movie theater. It was really small, really peaceful.”
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