Meet Carey Mulligan’s ex-military brother, Owain Mulligan, who just released a memoir: he says boarding a flight to Afghanistan as his sis was on Leo DiCaprio’s private jet was ‘particularly galling’

Apr 11 , 2025

Meet Carey Mulligan’s ex-military brother, Owain Mulligan, who just released a memoir. Photos: Greyhound Literary; AP

The Oscar-nominated actress’ older brother has just released a darkly funny memoir about his time in the British Army, which already has ringing endorsements from John Oliver and Richard E. Grant

To say that Carey Mulligan and her brother Owain Mulligan went down totally different career paths would be an understatement.

While the Oscar-nominated actress was busy flying around in her Great Gatsby co-star Leonardo DiCaprio’s private jets, and enjoying the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, her older sibling was pursuing a career in the military, as revealed in his new memoir, The Accidental Soldier: Dispatches from (Quite Near) the Front Line.

Carey Mulligan was flying on Leonardo DiCaprio’s private jet at the same time as her brother was deploying to Afghanistan. Photo: Reuters

“I remember on one of my tours I flew to Afghanistan on a trooping flight with 150 other soldiers, and all they give you is a bottle of water on board, but apart from that they sit you in your helmet and body armour for 10 hours,” he writes in the book, per the Daily Mail. “So, I was on that flight at the exact same time that Carey was crossing the Atlantic on Leonardo DiCaprio’s private jet, which always struck me as a particularly galling juxtaposition,” he added.

Owain, 42, describes Carey as his “best friend”, and attended her 2012 wedding to Mumford & Sons frontman Marcus Mumford.

Here’s what we know about him.

What is Owain Mulligan’s background?

Owain Mulligan grew up between the UK and Germany. Photo: Greyhound Literary

Owain Mulligan was born in London in 1982. He grew up living between the UK and Germany, and went on to study modern history at the University of Oxford, per his LinkedIn.

He was in the British Army

Carey Mulligan is extremely proud of her brother. Photo: Getty Images

Owain was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan and was a linguist for the army, according to the Daily Mail. His sister often speaks very fondly of him – and has shared stories of his experience. “When my brother was a soldier in Afghanistan, he was at a base around the corner from a girls’ school that had to be shut down because of the Taliban,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in 2014. “They had poisoned the water source. The only way it could reopen was if a new well was built. So my brother took up the initiative, amazingly, and started raising money for this school.”