Advertisement

For 'Gone Girl,' Rosamund Pike is the it girl

 
Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl.
Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl.
Published Oct. 6, 2014

The publicist's plea was simple yet complicated: If you talk with Rosamund Pike, avoid spoilers about her character in Gone Girl.

So noted. But that character — a wife who goes missing and narrates the erosion of her marriage in flashback — is the whole point of Pike's richest screen portrayal to date. It shows her in a deeper dimension, with complex and contradictory emotions. She seems an illusion at times, an enigmatic piece of fiction more than a real woman. Can we talk about this?

"I think you've found a way to explain it," Pike said by phone from New York. "It's always interesting what a filmmaker sees in you, what you're called upon to produce, whether your comedic side or your romantic side. And in this, it was all my sides and a few more."

Pike came in as an outsider to David Fincher's screen adaptation, a proper British woman whose best-known work draws on her cool reserve. She was icy Miranda Frost in Die Another Day. In An Education, she played the sweetly ignorant girlfriend of Dominic Cooper's con man. Her stunning beauty made her the perfect Jane Bennett in Pride and Prejudice and that regal bearing served her warrior goddess in Wrath of the Titans.

Gone Girl plops Pike into the Missouri humidity, where she sweats out charades of human behavior.

Pike, 35, was not lusting after this role. If she had been, it wouldn't have done much good, she said. Fincher has his own way of casting that has little to do with auditioning or eloquent appeals from actors who insist they would be perfect.

Fincher had Pike in his head when he called her. Eventually the actor realized she was under serious consideration. They talked frequently about the character of Amy Dunne, how they would put her on screen and how Pike would handle the transformation of becoming an American.

"It was a process where he sort of dissected me totally over a period of weeks, over Skype, in person and on the phone," Pike said. "And of course, now I realize that is the way he works."

Pike worked with a dialect coach to erode her Queens English, reaching the depths at one point in the film of speaking in Ozark hillbilly. "It's not just changing your voice, it's changing your whole attitude," she said. "I saw a clip of a talk show this morning and I thought, 'God, I am so English.' You have to lose all that when you are doing a part like this."

As she searched for types and models to draw upon for the role, Pike made a curious discovery. "I looked at Jacqueline Kennedy as a role model," she said. "There was something unknowable about that woman. Everyone wanted desperately to know that woman and I feel that nobody really truly did. Nobody really knew what was going on in that marriage."

Pike looked at pictures of Kennedy being hounded by paparazzi and imagined being in the skin of someone who danced a constant tango with her public image. Pike superimposed some of that complex obsession with image and privacy on Amy. "It seems odd, but it was very helpful," she said.

Fincher said he cast Pike in part for her opacity.

Planning your weekend?

Planning your weekend?

Subscribe to our free Top 5 things to do newsletter

We’ll deliver ideas every Thursday for going out, staying home or spending time outdoors.

You’re all signed up!

Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.

Explore all your options

"There was something about her that was so Amylike and I didn't know what it was," Fincher said. "I asked her about her upbringing and she told me she was an only child and it was like, 'That's it. That's that thing. You can't hide it.' My daughter's the same way. She's an only child and she's socialized around adults. Those people are just different. They don't know what a noogie is."

Being British also helped because Fincher wanted from her a sense of isolation — that her character had been uprooted and planted in a strange place.

Pike is not impressed with suggestions that Gone Girl will be her breakout moment. She hopes so, she'd like that, but she also knows that the ball has left her court. It is up to audiences, critics and producers.

"I have been told before that things will change and they haven't," she said with a laugh. "I've had great moments and disappointments. This is certainly a great moment."

Her next production will be her second baby, in November. She and partner Robie Uniacke already have a 2-year-old son, Solo.

Contributing: Los Angeles Times