Rosamund Pike

Birthday: 27 January 1979, Hammersmith, London, England, UK

Birth Name: Rosamund Mary Elizabeth Pike

Height: 174 cm

Born on January 27, 1979 in London, England, actress Rosamund Mary Elizabeth Pike is the only child of a classical violinist mother, Caroline (Friend), and an opera singer father, Julian Pike. Due to her parents' work, she spent her early childhood traveling around Europe. Pike attended Badminton School in Bristol, England and began acting at the National Youth Theatre. While appearing in a National Youth Theatre production of "Romeo and Juliet", she was first spotted and signed by an agent, although she continued her education at Wadham College, Oxford, where she read English Literature, eventually graduating with an upper second class honors degree.Pike appeared in a number of UK television series, including Wives and Daughters (1999), before scoring an auspicious feature film debut as the glacial beauty "Miranda Frost" in the James Bond film, Die Another Day (2002); when the film was released, she was only 23. Though her debut was a big-budget action film, the film work that followed was primarily in smaller, independent films, including Promised Land (2004), The Libertine (2004), (for which she won the Best Supporting Actress award at The British Independent Film Awards), and Pride & Prejudice (2005), as one of the Bennet daughters. A brief foray into Hollywood film followed with the action flick, Doom (2005), and the thriller, Fracture (2007), but she returned to smaller films with exceptional performances in three films: An Education (2009), Made in Dagenham (2010), and the lead opposite Paul Giamatti in Barney's Version (2010).As she continued her stage work in England, Pike appeared in the spy spoof, Johnny English Reborn (2011), and inhabited the role of "Andromeda" in the sci-fi epic, Wrath of the Titans (2012). She returned to action films with the female lead opposite Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher (2012).Pike entered into a relationship with a mathematical researcher named Robie Uniacke in 2009. She gave birth to their first son, named Solo, in May 2012. She returned to acting and landed the coveted title role in Gone Girl (2014). The film became a critical and box-office hit, with Pike earning the film's sole Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. She also earned nominations as Best Actress from Screen Actor's Guild, Golden Globes, and BAFTA. She gave birth to her second son with Uniacke in December 2014. Show less «

[on writer-director Christopher McQuarrie's film, Jack Reacher (2012)] He is such a great writer, he...Show more »

[on writer-director Christopher McQuarrie's film, Jack Reacher (2012)] He is such a great writer, he manages to give you all the satisfaction of a love affair without [the characters] ever actually touched. In a way, I started to think that maybe sex scenes are what people put on when there isn't any chemistry. Show less «

I think you can make a choice with that kind of thing. You can certainly keep a low public profile i...Show more »

I think you can make a choice with that kind of thing. You can certainly keep a low public profile if you want to. Ideally, I'd like to be living in upstate New York, in a house that I could renovate and fill with books and clothes, while being offered the kind of parts that are currently going to Kate Winslet and Nicole Kidman. Show less «

When you're dressed up like Miranda Frost [from Die Another Day (2002)], people assume you have a si...Show more »

When you're dressed up like Miranda Frost [from Die Another Day (2002)], people assume you have a similar character, but I was 21 and quaking inside. Show less «

I think it's OK to play to your strengths, and if I have a quality of Englishness that people like, ...Show more »

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. Show less «

[on Johnny Depp] -- He is the most amazing actor I've ever worked with. I felt very, very free with ...Show more »

[on Johnny Depp] -- He is the most amazing actor I've ever worked with. I felt very, very free with him. We had some very traumatic, violent scenes in which the director wanted us to push everything to the limit. I felt sick with worry the morning of shooting. I guess I drew on all the experiences of love I'd ever had. There were no rehearsals. It was very exciting. Show less «

Filming Pride & Prejudice (2005) was a joy and made for one of my happiest summers ever. "It cou...Show more »

Filming Pride & Prejudice (2005) was a joy and made for one of my happiest summers ever. "It could well be that the story brings out the best in people - and it sounds so cheesy, but we really did behave like a family. The girls playing the younger sisters had never been on a film set before and wanted to socialize all the time, so we picnicked, hung out in a beautiful country house and went swimming naked in a lake. It was idyllic. Show less «

[on David Fincher's suggestion that she use Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy as a model for Amy Dunne in Gon...Show more »

[on David Fincher's suggestion that she use Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy as a model for Amy Dunne in Gone Girl (2014)] I ordered old copies of the Vanity Fair in which she appeared on the cover. I scoured the internet for any footage of her or, even better, any interviews or recordings which captured her voice. And I realized that David had basically given me a cipher to study. There are countless photographs of Bessette: gorgeous portraits in Vanity Fair; vibrant, intimate photographs taken of Bessette and Kennedy engrossed in each other at parties; shots of her walking the New York streets, wrapping herself in cashmere as protection against the cold and probably photographers, head down, her long blond hair shielding her face from full view. There are even a fair few shots of her and Kennedy clearly in the midst of blistering rows in Central Park, in the street, but I could find nothing of her in her own words. And I thought, Well, maybe that's fine. Amy, as she wants to be seen, should be created from outside in. I tried to find a way to own that body language, the self-protective seductiveness, head down, hair falling....I couldn't really read her face, and so I tried to use that quality. You meet Amy, she smiles, but her eyes are always scanning you, assessing, seeing if you can play the game, surprised and pleased when you score a point, feeling that you might after all be worthwhile. It is not a relaxing way to live. Show less «

[on Johnny Depp] He's so brilliant to work with, so exciting, you believe in him so much as a charac...Show more »

[on Johnny Depp] He's so brilliant to work with, so exciting, you believe in him so much as a character. It made my job very easy. He's like the coolest kid in school. You want to be in his gang. His whole lifestyle is kind of wonderful. He travels with this big group of people. He's like a gypsy. His caravan is always filled with his friends, playing guitar and painting. You want to be in the band. The guys who look after the trailers were like, 'How do we clean in there?' because he covered it with drapes and candles, just covered every available surface. Show less «

Daniel Day-Lewis in In the Name of the Father (1993) was the first performance that made me think ab...Show more »

Daniel Day-Lewis in In the Name of the Father (1993) was the first performance that made me think about how incredible acting is. It made me realise the power of film and that this medium could have a physical reaction on me and I hadn't really experienced that before. I come from a theatrical family and grew up around stage, so film-going was not really part of my life. But I remember going to see this film and being riveted by the story and the performances. I found it sexy and believable; it took me into another world. I was in floods of tears at the end of it. Show less «

[on David Graham] He's so charming. I love working with him. The bond between Parker and Penelope - ...Show more »

[on David Graham] He's so charming. I love working with him. The bond between Parker and Penelope - plus the humour that is batted between them - is really fun to play. David is a gentleman and I am extremely fond of him. Show less «

[on the direction from Joe Wright in Pride & Prejudice (2005)] You can get quite self-conscious ...Show more »

[on the direction from Joe Wright in Pride & Prejudice (2005)] You can get quite self-conscious at times, there's this business of your close-up coming up but, in that big ball scene, he put three cameras on it. And in lots of the dinner scenes too, so you wouldn't actually know when your moment was coming. That's why it's got that lovely unaware quality to it, you really did feel it's being observed. I think it's because people didn't know they were being watched really, that's what you get, this window on life. Show less «

I don't think RADA wanted me, actually. When I was at Oxford I had a boyfriend at Central [School of...Show more »

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. Show less «

I'd love to say I was the kind of person who has an outline. But the only outline I have is that I w...Show more »

I'd love to say I was the kind of person who has an outline. But the only outline I have is that I want to carry on doing this all my life. Show less «

Rosamund Pike

Rosamund Pike's FILMOGRAPHY

Rosamund Pike'S roles

Feedback about this page?