Here’s a great new feature on Rooney from the NY Post, including reactions from people who’ve worked with her and her family regarding her big break.

What’s so special about Rooney Mara?
Who’s that Girl With the Tattoo?

She’s a virtual unknown, but she landed the role of the decade.

Rooney Mara, 25, will play the part coveted by every A-list actress in Hollywood: the punk, bisexual hacker named Lisbeth Salander in the David Fincher-directed remake of Swedish thriller “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

And speaking of tattoos, some are comparing her to another once-unknown young beauty. “I worked with Angelina Jolie 13 years ago, before she was famous, and Mara reminded me of the same thing,” says director Samuel Bayer, who directed Mara in her only major role thus far, in last April’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

What’s most astonishing, though, is the list of names she reportedly beat out: Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, Ellen Page and Carey Mulligan among them.

When movie studio Sony and Fincher announced Monday that after a worldwide search, Mara had been tapped for the part, many fans were left asking, ‘Who?’ and running for Wikipedia.

(Mara is so unfamiliar that film-news site Ain’t It Cool posted an article about the casting — and mistakenly used a photo of Rooney’s slightly better-known actor sister, Kate, to identify her.)

But those few directors who’ve worked with her in the past say Mara has all the makings of a huge star.

“She has that great combination of mystery and familiarity,” says Miguel Arteta, who directed Mara in last year’s “Youth in Revolt.”

“There’s something about her eyes that inspires your imagination.”

“I had no doubt that she’d become a movie star,” he says. “I was just happy to get her for a small role on the way up.”

Bayer says that Mara has an intensity, a quality that no doubt helped her in the audition.

“She doesn’t behave like a normal 25-year-old. There was a depth to her personality that transcended the role,” he says.

Another factor that also may have helped: Mara has already worked for the notoriously difficult Fincher, in September’s “The Social Network,” the story of Facebook’s contentious founding. Mara’s sister Kate tells The Post that Rooney and Fincher get along well.

Their relationship gave Mara an edge in winning a role that Sony co-chairwoman Amy Pascal told film blog The Wrap was “the greatest character for a girl since I-don’t-know-what.”

Based on the late Stieg Larsson’s book, which has sold more than 5 million copies in the US alone, the thriller follows Salander, a bisexual computer expert hired by journalist Mikael Blomkvist (to be played by Daniel Craig) to help solve a decades-old missing-person case. Salander is promiscuous, almost autistic in her antisocial tendencies, and at one point, she is sexually assaulted. Rooney Mara, apparently, is not concerned.

“I think she had more worries about playing that thing on ‘Elm Street,’ ” says Mara’s maternal grandfather Tim Rooney, referring to “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

The Salander role will require a lot from a performer in a movie that Sony has promised will be “very R-rated.”

“She was a very bright kid and a good student in school,” Tim says, “so she has the ability to grasp things quickly that maybe some other people wouldn’t.”

Physically, Mara seems an ideal choice to play a rakish Swede who has dyed her hair black.

“She’s Irish, but you really could make a case for her being Swedish,” says Tim, who is president of Yonkers Raceway.

“She has natural blond hair, she’s thin. She’s very pale and light-skinned, as you’d think someone from Sweden would be.”

Her grandfather says that Mara was quietly confident about her chances. “She’s not much of a braggadocio type of person, but she thought she did good in the audition, and when this was going along, she thought she had a good chance of getting the part.”

The competition was said to be among the most heated and closely watched since the frenzy to find a Scarlett O’Hara for 1939’s “Gone With the Wind.” MGM searched for two years to fill the role and reportedly considered dozens of actresses, including Lucille Ball and Bette Davis, before deciding on Vivien Leigh. Fans were initially outraged that Leigh, a Brit, had been chosen to play a Southerner, but the performance ultimately won her a Best Actress Oscar.

Mara’s casting has stirred up the same kind of debate among fans who wonder whether Mara can top the well-received Swedish adaptation of the book that starred striking Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth. (When phoned, Mara hung up without saying anything, and she did not return a text message asking for comment.)

Mara’s press shyness is odd, considering her family’s pedigree. Two of her great-grandfathers founded football’s New York Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers, and her father still works for Big Blue. Mara was raised in Westchester, and attended NYU before moving to LA in search of an acting career. She landed bit parts in episodes of “ER” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and a total of six films before breaking out with “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Being so closely associated with two professional football programs has exposed her to some of the pressures of fame, but nothing like what she’s about to experience.

“I don’t know how this is not going to change her life. It feels so huge, that it’s still sinking in,” says sister Kate Mara, who has appeared in “Iron Man 2” and “Entourage.”

“Even people who aren’t in the business know about the book.”

Kate told The Post that she and her sister talk every day, but that she learned the big news via text message. She’s now planning a send-off party before Mara leaves for Sweden to start shooting next month.

Those who have worked with the actor in the past say Mara’s already up to the task.

“One of the first times I saw her, I don’t know how long she had been acting but I was so pleasantly surprised. She did a really smart job,” says Avy Kaufman, a casting director who worked on “Salt” and had auditioned Mara for roles in the past.

“Ultimately she didn’t get the job because somebody else was more whatever-the-word-is. But her audition really stood out.”

As with “Gone with the Wind,” Mara’s casting will remain a source of debate until the film’s release (in late 2011).

“Hmm. [Rooney] doesn’t seem ‘bad’ enough. Maybe a lot of makeup and hopefully good acting will change that,” wrote one skeptic on the movie’s Facebook page.

“It’s at times like these that a DISlike button would come in handy,” snarked another.

Zeta Interactive, a marketing firm that monitors online activity, reports that Rooney’s “tonal buzz” has increased 11 percent to 92 percent positive after she captured the role of Lisbeth, meaning fans seem to be happy.

But if she or the filmmakers disappoint, there will be hell to pay. One online critic writing on Popeater lamented Hollywood’s ability to ruin great books. “I am ALWAYS DISAPPOINTED,” the griper wrote. “I hope I am NOT disappointed this time around. STICK TO THE STORY . . . the author would be rolling in his grave otherwise.”

Source: The NY Post