Carey Mulligan has been on our minds and on our screens since the early 2000s, with box-office hits including Pride and Prejudice (2005), The Great Gatsby (2013), Promising Young Woman (2020), and most recently, Saltburn (2023), Maestro (2023), and Spaceman (2024).
Still, the actor keeps her private life away from the spotlight, and that includes her marriage to Marcus Mumford. Though the two have been married since 2012 and have attended various Hollywood events together, we don’t often hear about the low-key—though very successful—singer-songwriter.
So, read on for everything we know about him and his marriage to Mulligan.
Who is he?
Marcus Oliver Johnstone Mumford is a British-American musician and record producer. He is also very famous and successful in the entertainment world, as lead singer of folk-rock band Mumford & Sons. Since he formed the band in 2007, its popularity has steadily grown. The group’s biggest hits include “I Will Wait,” “The Cave,” and “Little Lion Man.”
![new york, new york may 02 marcus mumford and carey mulligan attends the 2022 met gala](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/gettyimages-1395075968-65e78b2187833.jpg?resize=980:* "The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" - Arrivals")
Mumford was born on January 31, 1987, in Anaheim, California, to British parents John and Eleanor Mumford. He attended King’s College School in Wimbledon, England, where he met fellow band member Ben Lovett. He then studied classical music at the University of Edinburgh, and later returned to London to continue his music career.
Who are his parents?
Mumford’s parents, John and Eleanor, were leaders in the Vineyard Churches in the U.K. and Ireland for more than 20 years, so the musician grew up in a Christian home.
While Mumford & Sons does not identify as a Christian band, there are Christian music influences in some of their early songs. Mumford told Rolling Stone in 2020: “It felt like early on, people wanted to put you in a box: ‘You’re a Christian band.’ It certainly isn’t as simple as that.”
How did he and Carey meet?
Mulligan and Mumford actually met at summer camp as kids in the ’90s and became pen pals! But as teens do, they got busy with other things, lost interest, and lost touch.
“We were friends when we were kids. We went to camp together,” Mulligan said on the SmartLess podcast in December 2023, adding that she wrote in her diary at the time that Mumford “was the nicest [and] the kindest person I’d ever met, and I gave him a nine and a half out of ten.” Still, she also noted that she didn’t think he was boyfriend material—“not that I’d ever had a boyfriend at that time! But I decided that he was not it.”
Over a decade later, they briefly reconnected on Facebook before both deciding to deactivate their accounts—at which point, again, they lost touch.
Eventually, however, they connected again in 2011, when they began working together on the Coen brothers’ 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis. Mulligan has said that at the time, she joked with Mumford that they should probably should get married since destiny kept bringing them back together—and they did. Their relationship escalated quickly from old friends to lovers, and the pair got engaged in 2011, after just five months of dating. They tied the knot in 2012, on a farm in Somerset, England.
Do they have kids?
Yes. Mulligan and Mumford share three children, Evelyn Grace, eight, Wilfred, five, and a baby girl born in 2023 whose name has yet to be disclosed.
Have they collaborated?
The two fell in love on the set of Inside Llewyn Davis, in which Mulligan had an acting role and Mumford voiced a character and associate-produced the movie’s soundtrack. Since then, they’ve attended many red-carpet events and shows together, always supporting each other’s careers. Their latest o-screen collaboration, however, was on Saturday Night Live, in 2021.
Mulligan and Mumford seem to have gotten the idea that nobody ever remembers they’re married, because for her SNL hosting gig on April 10, 2021, she did a whole bit about it.
During her monologue, the actor mentioned that Mumford was at home with their kids—and then the singer actually showed up. “Very excited to be here because my husband was actually musical guest three times, Marcus Mumford, from the band Mumford & Sons,” Mulligan said. “Or, as I like to call it, ‘my husband and sons.’ But he couldn’t be here tonight, so he’s at home watching the children. Hi, babe, love you,” she added, with a wave.
“Love you, too! Hi, Carey!” Mumford yelled to his wife, after popping up among the audience. “It’s me, Marcus Mumford, from the band Mumford & Sons!” he said, adding that he’d left their kids “with the Sons.”
Though he didn’t perform on the show that night, Mumford did play some notes as Mulligan closed out her monologue with the famous “We’ve got a great show tonight!”
Rosa Sanchez is the senior news editor at Harper's Bazaar, working on news as it relates to entertainment, fashion, and culture. Previously, she was a news editor at ABC News and, prior to that, a managing editor of celebrity news at American Media. She has also written features for Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Forbes, and The Hollywood Reporter, among other outlets.
