Mara started acting at nine years old in a school musical, went to a few youth theater-expressions schools and showed up in group Theater and in school plays. She didn't get the part in her first audition for Homicide: Life on the street, however knew from that point on that she simply needed to act. Mara moved on from Fox Lane High School and was later acknowledged into the Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied music yet in the end conceded her space to fill in as a performer.

Mara's first TV part was in the 1997s drama Law & Order. She happened to visitor star on various TV arrangement, including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit , Ed and Madigan Men. Mara additionally showed up on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation , Cold Case, CSI: Miami and Boston Public that same year. In 2012, Mara joined the cast of the first Netflix arrangement House of Cards. The political show stars Kevin Spacey and is focused around a novel by Michael Dobbs and the 1990 British TV arrangement House of Cards. David Fincher guided the pilot scene. Mara stars as Zoe Barnes, a correspondent from Washington, D.C. On July tenth, 2014 she was assigned for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.

Her film presentation was in Random Hearts, with Harrison Ford in 1999, guided by Sydney Pollack. She played Jessica Chandler, the girl of a congresswoman (Kristin Scott Thomas). She next showed up in the Sundance Film Festival honor winning movies Joe the King (1999) and Tadpole (2002), close by Sigourney Weaver. Mara co-featured in Peoples (2004), a show and transitioning story taped in Louisville, Kentucky. She featured in the immediate to-feature ghastliness film Urban Legends: Bloody Mary and showed up with Noah Wyle and Illeana Douglas in The Californians in 2005. Her supporting part as the girl of Heath Ledger's character in the Academy Award-winning Brokeback Mountain that year brought her more across the board basic notice. In 2007, she showed up in the satire Full of It with Ryan Pinkston for New Line Cinema. The film later disclosed on TV as Big Liar on Campus. Mara was likewise offered in a promoting crusade for dress retailer Gap called, "khakis with attitude." She showed up in Shooter, a thriller around an expert rifleman depicted by Mark Wahlberg, baited out of retirement to keep a death. Mara played a Kentucky dowager, Sarah Fenn, embracing a southern stress for the part.

Mara has expressed she originates from an "immense" gang. Her father is one of 11 kids. She has 22 aunties and uncles and 40 cousins. She has been dating performing artist Max Minghella since 2010. Mara credits her vegetarian eating regimen and customary workouts for keeping herself fit. As a relative of the New York Giants' Tim Mara and Wellington Mara, and also the Pittsburgh Steelers' Art Rooney, she is a fanatic of both groups. She jokes that "In case I'm frantic at my mother I root for the Giants, and in case I'm pissed at my father I root for the Steelers". This relationship helped her being thrown in We Are Marshall.