Carey Mulligan is 'Mad' for her man

NEW YORK — Carey Mulligan's agent needs a raise.

The British actress, who broke out as a precocious schoolgirl in 2009's An Education, has since then had a bevy of handsome co-stars.

Take Ryan Gosling in 2011's Drive. Leonardo DiCaprio in 2013's The Great Gatsby. And the three disparate gentleman vying for her heart in Far From the Madding Crowd (in theaters Friday), based on Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel. The film is corsets removed from this week's other huge release, the superhero blockbuster-to-be Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Mulligan's prickly, passionate Bathsheba Everdene is wooed, with varying degrees of romantic success, by Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge) and William Boldwood (Michael Sheen).

"It's very difficult for me to not work with good-looking men. So I've got three in this one," Mulligan says, joking that she had it formalized as part of her contract "a long time ago. I just snuck it in there."

In real life, Mulligan has been married to musician Marcus Mumford (lead singer of Mumford & Sons) since 2012, something she barely touches on when making the media rounds.

But on screen, she wears her heart on her proverbial tightly fitted sleeve, thanks in this case mostly to Schoenaerts, who plays the sheep farmer who first pursues Bathsheba. The two had never met before filming, but "I just admired him from my living room, watching him on TV," says Mulligan.

The whole experience, says Mulligan, was more stinky than seductive, unless your chosen fragrance is manure. Given that both Mulligan and Schoenaerts play country folk, they became very familiar with sheep excrement.

"That was fun in the beginning of the day. At the end, it was less fun. The water just smells and you see things floating past you," says Mulligan. "I have a photo of us in our waders. We had to take several showers (a day)."

Concurs Schoenaerts, who was born and raised in Belgium: "Ninety minutes of showers. I grew up in the city. I'm an urban guy."