text: She realised something was wrong when her grandmother struggled to use her knife and fork. Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan subsequently watched Alzheimer’s disease take hold of Margaret Booth. Now, 14 years after Mrs Booth, affectionately known as Nans by the actress, was diagnosed, Miss Mulligan has revealed her anger at how dismissively dementia sufferers are treated. Hollywood actress Carey Mulligan says more needs to be done to raise awareness of dementia. Her grandmother Margaret Booth, who she is pictured with here on a charity walk, suffers with the illness . The 29-year-old said she watched as her grandmother, a former teacher, develop problems with her memory. Mulligan, a patron of the Alzheimer's Society and said her gran hasn't recognised her in at least five years . According to the actress, 29, there is a ‘shame or humour’ attached to the illness, which causes memory loss and language problems. Despite being one of the greatest influences in Miss Mulligan’s career, having encouraged her to act and sing as a child, Mrs Booth is unaware of the extent of her granddaughter’s fame and appears to have struggled to recognise her for about eight years. Speaking about the disease, which affects 850,000 in the UK, Miss Mulligan said: ‘It’s quite quickly disregarded as being a sort of age-related thing, ‘Oh, granny’s lost her marbles’ – that sort of throwaway comment about somebody who has a brain disease… There’s not an awful lot of awareness in society.’ Mrs Booth was once a gifted piano player and a geography teacher, who took a great interest in her grandchildren’s education. But she began having trouble remembering things and would sometimes struggle to find her own home. And it means she has missed out on witnessing the success of Miss Mulligan’s career, which has seen her star in films including The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice and her latest film Far From the Madding Crowd, which is out next month. The interview with Carey Mulligan appears in the latest edition of the Radio Times . Recalling watching the disease take hold, Miss Mulligan said: ‘One of the last times that we were at home together with her, we had a meal and she sat down and she looked at her knife and fork, and she didn’t know what they did.’ Ms Booth now lives in a residential home in Pontardawe, Wales. When one of Miss Mulligan’s films is on television, it is played by her carers, who wrote to Miss Mulligan to tell her ‘Nans is very proud’ of her when she won a BAFTA award for An Education. And every time Miss Mulligan begins a new play, such as Starlight which she starred in last year, her mother sends her a good luck opening night card, signed ‘from Nans’. Speaking about the touching tradition, Miss Mulligan told Radio Times: ‘She’ll put a photo of Nans in there, too. It’s really sweet. It makes me super emotional.’ Miss Mulligan, who is married to Marcus Mumford, lead singer of the band Mumford & Sons, first revealed her grandmother was suffering from Alzheimer’s in 2013, as she became a patron of the Alzheimer’s Society. Carey Mulligan meets a fan at the Far From The Madding Crowd premiere. Every time she begins a new play her mother sends her a good luck opening night card signed 'from Nans' with a photo of her grandmother . She said she wanted to make people ‘more aware in their daily lives of those who could be suffering with the disease’. And last year she wheeled her grandmother around a ‘memory walk’ in aid of the charity. Revealing her grandmother’s diagnosis, Miss Mulligan told Channel 4: ‘She hasn’t recognised me for about five or six years. That’s really hard. It’s really sad. But especially for my mum and my aunt and uncle. ‘She was a geography teacher and she was very passionate about our education and would always ask us about what GCSEs we were doing, what A-levels we were doing. ‘And I remember her one day not being able to remember the different subjects I was taking for A-level and I remember thinking that was something she cared so much about, that wouldn’t be something she easily forgot. 'And then it progressed from there, she would struggle to find her way home when she went out walking.’
target: Carey Mulligan's grandmother suffers from Alzheimer's disease .
  Margaret Booth has struggled to recognise her grandchild for eight years .
  Mulligan, 29, has urged for greater awareness of the illness in society .