Rosamund Pike
Rosamund Pike
Rosamund Mary Ellen Pikeis an English actress. She began her acting career by appearing in stage productions such as Romeo and Juliet and Skylight. She made her screen debut in the television film A Rather English Marriage, followed by television roles in Wives and Daughtersand Love in a Cold Climate. She received international recognition for her film debut as Bond girl Miranda Frost in Die Another Day, for which she received the Empire Award for Best Newcomer. Following her breakthrough,...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth27 January 1979
CityLondon, England
I think, you know, as an actor we get these terribly sort of pretentious ideas in our heads. We try to take everything very seriously at first, you know, until we lighten up, we get onboard, and have a laugh.
I always think that the people who have the hardest time in the spotlight are the people who have unearned fame, like the girlfriends of people who are famous or people who become figures of attention, not through their own merit.
We, Brits, need to be sort of loosened up. And there's some transfer overseas, I think the more American fare that comes to the U.K., the more cross-fertilization there is that's perhaps changing.
I think it's OK to play to your strengths, and if I have a quality of Englishness that people like, I won't hide that. I'm probably not going to play a junkie and that's OK because there are other people who will do it better. A view that's been held for a long time is that the best way to prove oneself as an actor is to play the grittiest roles out there. I don't agree with that.
I don't think RADA wanted me, actually. When I was at Oxford I had a boyfriend at Central [School of Speech and Drama] and it looked like the most fantastic life, but I think not going makes you more free. Nothing can teach you what it's like to work on a film set, and the best education there can be for an actor is to walk up the street and observe human nature.
I've been doing Pride and Prejudice all summer, so suddenly the chance to be holed up with a bunch of marines is quite attractive, and probably a necessary dose of male energy.
I've been on stage plenty of times, and one of the things about being a stage actress is you have a 3-month run to revisit the story nightly and play it again.
I've never done a film in Los Angeles, so I don't know what that would be like - that experience of working in a big studio. I can't imagine... yet.
Sometimes it irks when people come up in the street and say, 'Oh I'm a huge James Bond fan' - when you obviously want them to be a fan of your work in particular.
You get those couples who are very fearful of bringing children into the mix because they feel like somehow that link between them as a couple is going to somehow dissolve or become less powerful or whatever. And that somehow the child is going to disrupt their happy stage.
I would love to play the lead in a big romantic comedy. That's definitely a dream of mine.
You can get things out of acting with someone a second time around that you don't necessarily get the first time because you're more familiar, more comfortable.
I remember times of anxiety, ups and downs, and times of unexpected windfalls. But my parents loved what they did. And because their work was also their hobby, it taught me that work could be fulfilling.
One goes on with the blithe belief that who you really are is transparent to everybody. Then you realise, with some horror, that in fact it's not. So all you can do is keep muddying the waters a bit.