British actress and narrator
Rosamund Mary Ellen Pike (born January–February 1979)[a] is a British actress and narrator. She has received various accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award.
She began her acting career by appearing in stage productions such as Romeo and Juliet, alongside Paul Ready, and Gas Light. After her screen debut in the television film A Rather English Marriage (1998) and television roles in Wives and Daughters (1999) and Love in a Cold Climate (2001), she received international recognition for her film debut as Bond girl Miranda Frost in Die Another Day (2002), for which she received the Empire Award for Best Newcomer. Following her breakthrough, she won the BIFA Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Libertine (2004) and portrayed Jane Bennet in Pride & Prejudice (2005).
Pike had film appearances in the sci-fi film Doom (2005), the crime-mystery thriller film Fracture (2007), the drama film Fugitive Pieces (2007), the coming-of-age drama An Education (2009), for which she was nominated for the London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Supporting Actress of the Year, and sci-fi comedy The World's End (2013). She also received British Independent Film Award nominations for An Education and Made in Dagenham (2010), and was nominated for a Genie Award for Barney's Version (2010). Her other films include the spy action comedy Johnny English Reborn (2011), the epic action-adventure fantasy Wrath of the Titans (2012), and the action thriller Jack Reacher (2012).
In 2014, her performance in the psychological thriller Gone Girl was met with widespread critical acclaim, winning the Saturn Award for Best Actress and receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Pike received further acclaim for her starring role as Ruth Williams Khama in the biographical drama A United Kingdom (2016) and for portraying the journalist Marie Colvin in the biographical war drama A Private War (2018), for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. Pike won a Primetime Emmy Award for her role in State of the Union in 2019. In 2021, Pike won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in I Care a Lot. She currently stars as Moiraine in the Amazon Original series The Wheel of Time, based on the best selling novels of the same name.
New YorkIt was in New York, and I've always wanted to film in New York. And the writer was a teenage friend of mine. We did youth theatre together when we were 16 and always had a dream of making a film together. And ten years later, we've done it. So it's great.
New YorkI'd really love to live in New York for awhile. That's what I'm hoping to do.
The response to Pride has been so overwhelming. I mean, people have really loved it. And it's so rewarding because we had such a fun time making that film, and it was made with so much heart, that it's lovely that people seem to be responding in kind to that.
Actresses generally arent allowed to have haircuts, because short hair isnt considered as versatile.
I'm probably not going to play a junkie and that's OK because there are other people who will do it better.
Usually, when you first start out, you're so grateful to get anything that you just sort of take it and say: "Thank you very much." You're too afraid to even mention the money because it's embarrassing.
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 every physical program has to come from good nutrition.
I've got friends who are pyrotechnics who do big fire shows, so I'm really fascinated by that.
The job of an actor is the same in all of them, really. I mean, you're just creating a character that you hope people will believe, so it doesn't make that much of a difference really.
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.
And I like the look on people's faces when I say I'm doing this movie called Pride and Prejudice and they kind of smile, and then I say I'm in a movie called Doom and they kind of do a double take and try and put the two things together. And they never quite manage to.
Ive 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 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.
You can certainly keep a low public profile if you want to.
I just want my child to have security and being looked after by me, by my other half, by my mother and by a nanny. We all share that responsibility equally and I think he is a very well-adjusted little boy.
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.
Obviously when you're pregnant everything changes, you have another body to take care of.
It's something that I am going over in my head about the whole video game thing, and whether you support violence by being in a film like this. I mean, to me, it's incredibly unreal and it's all about the action, and just explosions.
Fancy optimizers have fancy bugs.
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.
Especially in Britain, people want to limit you.
I realized that many men are happy to play a supporting role to another man, but they are much less happy to play a supporting role to a woman. People are saying we need more females in our industry and we need more female-driven stories, but that takes the men of bankable star quality to come forward and play supporting roles in those films, because ultimately that's what the women have always done. We've always lent our name value to male-centric stories, and now we're going to have to ask the men to swallow their pride, because it seems that it's about pride.
I think actors have to have clear goals in term of fitness, I think it is very important. I did yoga very seriously and I think that is a wonderful exercise. I take tennis lessons, and I swim a lot.
There are 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. Of course it is true, that's exactly what a child does but it's not something to be feared, it's to be embraced.
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.
I believe in eating all the right kinds of foods, and I don't believe in a totally nonfat diet.
In the original computer game of Doom, you not only have to kill things. You have to pulverise them.
You want to make entertainment sometimes, and sometimes you want to make art, because I think the way we understand ourselves as human beings is through art, and the way we process emotions - I know I do - is through recognizing experiences on screen, or in novels, or in paintings.
Anger is not an accepted thing for women. And, you know, I do get angry. I feel its a very honest emotion.
As a woman, you feel that you shouldnt want to better yourself against others. Ambition has become such an ugly word, hasnt it?
I look my best when I'm totally free, on holiday, walking on the beach.
If I don't win the match I at least want to improve my game.
If I see any sort of injustice, I can fight like a dog. I'm not frightened to be outspoken and I can get very angry. I think expressing anger is not something that's considered very feminine... or British! If I saw someone slandered in the press... libel is something I really loathe. So, I probably would speak out about that, whether it was about myself or someone else.
Acting is about communicating what it is like to be human: the pain, the laughs, the misery, the joy. I suppose I am searching to have it all.
I know I’ve got loads that has never been tapped.