Rooney Mara is set to become an overnight star, thanks to her Golden Globe-nominated breakthrough role in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but the 26-year-old actress doesn’t anticipate life changing all that much.

“It’s quite strange seeing the posters everywhere and especially right now in this room with all these giant heads of me,” the soft-spoken actress says with embarrassment as she glances at posters blown up and on display all over the walls of her hotel room, “but I feel quite lucky because while it’s me on the poster, certainly it’s a very different look than how I’m sitting here right now and I think that’s going to be really helpful in the next few months!”

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is based on Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novel that went on to become a global phenomenon as a trilogy of books, released shortly after the 50-year-old author died of a heart attack in 2004. The Swedish movie adaptations were also hugely popular in that country but now Hollywood is taking on the story of crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) and Lisbeth Salander (Mara), the psychologically troubled anti-social computer hacker who helps him investigate a 40-year-old murder mystery.

Wearing minimal makeup and a classic gray Chanel dress and conservative Christian Louboutin boots, Mara makes a good argument for why it’s unlikely you’d recognize her as the pierced and tattooed character she plays in the film. She’s also surprisingly shy, which makes it even more impressive that she pulled off one of the boldest performances of the year, including a brutal rape scene in which her character is betrayed by the man who serves as her guardian, played menacingly by popular Swedish actor Yorick Van Wageningen.

“Yorick is the sweetest man you could ever ask for to be your rapist,” Mara says in all sincerity. “But that also made it harder because he was so gentle and sweet and when we started out, he would say ‘are you OK?’ and apologize after every take and I had to tell him not to do that because I didn’t really want to think of him as that sweet man in those moments.”

Mara was discovered by director David Fincher - no stranger to edgy movies including; Alien 3, Se7en, The Game and Fight Club - when he first cast her as the girlfriend who dumped Mark Zuckerberg in the opening scenes of The Social Network. Despite every actress in Hollywood – from Scarlett Johansson to Carey Mulligan - lobbying for the role, Fincher gave her the career-making role. “I’m slow to trust people but David had a weird way of making me comfortable and I probably would have done anything for him,” she admits. “I never felt exploited making the film and I never felt uncomfortable, but I also think because the character looked so different than me, it never really felt like me so it was easy to detach.”

Mara grew up in Bedford, New York as a member of a sprawling sports dynasty that started with great-grandfathers Art Rooney, Sr. (from whom she took her stage name) and Tim Mara, founders of the NFL franchises; the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Giants respectively. Her grandfather, Tim Mara, ran Yonkers Raceway and her grandfather, Wellington Mara, was an influential co-owner of the New York Giants while his son, her father Timothy Mara, was the Vice President of player evaluation for the Giants.

“It was pretty clear from the beginning that sports wasn’t going to be my path,” she admits sheepishly, “but my dad is one of eleven children and there are over forty of us grandchildren so there was never any pressure to be involved in sports; we’ve all just been encouraged to do what we love.”

Mara’s older sister Kate Mara, 28, was a veteran actress – she’s currently appearing in a recurring role on the TV drama American Horror Story – when she helped Rooney get started with a small role in a 2005 horror movie Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (she was billed as Tricia Mara). “My sister’s been acting since she was twelve and I’m not sure how things would have been different if she hadn’t been doing that and I didn’t know it was possible,” Mara says. “I didn’t even want to admit that acting was what I wanted to do until suddenly I was doing it!”

Movie: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Genre: Drama
Buzz: the next big franchise
Stars: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara
Director: David Fincher
Rated: TBA
Release: January 12