New Rosamund Pike Interview

There's a new Rosamund Pike interview article from Scotland Sunday By James Mottram. The article is very long and talks a lot about Rosamund often mistaken or perceives as an ice-cold image...mainly due to her post Bond role, the villainous Miranda Frost (from one of the Bond films, Die Another Day, which she co-starred with Pierce Brosnan, Judi Dench, and Halle Berry). It mentions her post Bond films Pride & Prejudice and Doom...her ex-boyfriend/P&P co-star Simon Woods and ex-fiancee/P&P director Joe Wright...as well as her upcoming films such as An Education, Barney's Version, We Want Sex, and Burning Palms to name some.

Here are the highlights or rather interesting parts from the article/interview:

Interview: Actress Rosamund Pike

IF YOU type Rosamund Pike into Google, one of the first things that pops up is an intriguing picture re-imagining the actress as a puppet.

If anyone is to blame, it might just be James Bond. In 2002, when she was barely known to the public, Pike landed the plum role opposite Pierce Brosnan of the villainous Olympic fencing gold medallist Miranda Frost in Die Another Day. She freely admits, "I have Bond to thank for my whole career." Indeed, compared to some Bond girls, who – post-007 – disappear back to the modelling career or life of sunbathing in St Tropez from whence they came, Pike used it as a launch pad. Hollywood films such as Fracture and Doom followed, as did well-received period pieces such as Pride and Prejudice and The Libertine.

Now 30, it hardly helps that, with her perfectly sculpted features, gem-like green eyes and slim figure, she comes across as unapproachable. Or that her English reserve once led a friend to state, "She's not a gusher."

In her eyes, though, she's different. "I think, post-Bond, people forgot that I'm very girly," she says. "People compartmentalise you much more than I like to think they do. You wouldn't have thought…"

Well, actually, you would. When we meet, Pike is sitting in a suite in London's Soho Hotel. She's in town to promote An Education, the story of Jenny (played by Carey Mulligan), a 16-year-old schoolgirl who falls under the spell of an older man (Peter Sarsgaard). Based on the memoirs of British journalist Lynn Barber, it was adapted by Nick Hornby and has drawn rave reviews, even winning an Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

Pike's role as Helen, a rather daffy girl who comes into Jenny's orbit, is a supporting one, but it may just be the most important of her career. Not only does it prove what a consummate scene-stealer she is, but it shows us a side of her we have never seen before: the comedienne par excellence. "Certainly, doing comedy has been fantastic, suddenly realising that I could make people laugh. Oh, I love it. I love it," she trills. "I'm really excited about it. 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."

- Her love of theatre evidently comes from her upbringing. Her parents, Julian and Caroline, were both opera singers. "It certainly made storytelling very much a part of my childhood," she says, vividly recalling the first time she set foot on stage. Her father was performing in The Coronation of Poppaea and invited her to stand alongside him. "I apparently just lay down," she says, with a smile. Nevertheless, something clicked inside her. "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."

- As it stands, Pike must surely possess a sense of humour. How else could she go from working on Pride and Prejudice one day to Doom, a science-fiction thriller based on a video game, the next? "Doom was a truly dreadful film," she shrieks. "It was beset by certain problems. At one stage, we really thought it would be quite brilliant and edgy."

At least she's honest and, if nothing else, it made a perfect contrast to playing in a Jane Austen production. "Really, it made me laugh," she admits. "When I got the call about Doom, I was in a bonnet, in a field near Tunbridge Wells. I thought, 'My God, if they could see me – they would probably recast.'"

- Pike is currently in Montreal for two months to make Barney's Version, a new film with Paul Giamatti and Dustin Hoffman, based on the novel by Mordecai Richler. She seems head over heels for it. "It's one of those scripts. It's really how people talk, and really how people behave. It's very detailed. I suppose it's got a tone of one of the early Woody Allens, like Annie Hall." Cast as the third wife of Barney, a larger-than-life carouser who is under suspicion of murder, it may be an intriguing prospect. But it has come at a cost. "I'm missing one of my closest friends' weddings in a couple of weeks because I'm in Montreal. It's the arrogance of the film business – that somehow one bulldozes through one's personal life sometimes."

- Her personal life is a tricky subject, not least because in the past it has become rather too entangled with the film business. On Pride & Prejudice, she was cast opposite her ex-boyfriend, actor Simon Woods, who played the romantic interest for her character, Jane Bennet. If that can't have been easy to deal with, neither was what happened in the film's wake. Pike began dating director Joe Wright, who proposed to her on Lake Como just days before Atonement, his follow-up to Pride and Prejudice, was due to open the Venice Film Festival. At the time, it was a match made in British film industry heaven: the glamorous actress and the wünderkind filmmaker.

Pike even moved to Los Angeles with Wright when he began shooting his first US production, the recently released drama The Soloist. But by the summer of 2008, their relationship had come to an end. The story goes that Wright broke off the engagement after wedding invitations picturing the couple in a hot tub were sent out without his knowledge. I've been strictly warned about speaking to Pike about her personal life – which is basically code for not mentioning this split. After all, she once burst into tears mid-interview when considering how hard it was to work with Woods on Pride and Prejudice. Perhaps she's a far more sensitive and fragile creature than Miranda Frost would have us believe.

Read Rosamund Pike's full interview here.

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An Education starring Carey Mulligan and Rosamund Pike opens in [limited] U.S. theaters this Friday, October 9th!