Carey Mulligan sealed Gatsby role with a kiss

Carey Mulligan bagged a role in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby by giving Leonardo DiCaprio a surprise kiss during her audition.

The Australian filmmaker recruited leading man DiCaprio to help pick an actress to play Jay Gatsby's love interest Daisy Buchanan in the upcoming big-screen adaptation of the classic novel, and it was Mulligan's brave smooch that really impressed the Titanic star.

Luhrmann tells The Hollywood Reporter, "Leonardo was at every audition. He worked with me - it was work. He is not an acting snob but I guess if he was a chef, he can really tell what is fine cuisine. So Carey came in. I'd swapped scenes (to read during the audition) and forgot and (the script said) she kisses him. (Mulligan) grabbed me... and she said, 'Should I? Should I kiss him?' I went, 'Yeah, but don't tell him!'

"So she does the scene, absolutely fantastic, and grabs him and kisses him. She went out the door and I was just thinking, 'My God, that is Daisy Buchanan.'

"I thought, 'I wonder what Di (DiCaprio) thinks'. He said, 'The way Carey manifests Daisy is like something Gatsby would never have met in his life, something so delicate that he would want to protect to her to an obsessive and almost impossible level.' And then it was done. It was done."