Welcome to Casting Call. In this series I’ll be taking a look at the people who, arguably, most profoundly and most visibly effect our response to cinema; the actors. Each week I’ll profile and look at the career of an actor from one of the week’s cinema, blu ray or dvd releases, and discuss several of their films and performances.
This week’s subject came to notice as a Bond girl, which can be the kiss of death for an actor’s career, but she has evaded that pitfall, avoided typecasting, and quietly developed a reputation as a versatile actress, able to juggle decorative roles in mainstream films with more character driven independent projects. This week her latest film, Johnny English Reborn, is out on Blu Ray and DVD. Ladies and Gentlemen: Rosamund Pike
Name: Rosamund Mary Elizabeth Pike
Age: 33
Born: 27th January 1979
Family: Parents Caroline and Julian
First Film: A Rather English Marriage (1998, TV)
Next Film: Wrath of the Titans (2012)
Born in London, her parents’ work as concert musicians meant that Rosamund Pike spent the first few years of her life on the road around Europe (fine training for a life as an actor). The acting bug seems to have bitten at school. While at Badminton School in Bristol, Pike also appeared in the National Youth Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet. On graduation from secondary school she was turned down by several drama schools, and instead went to Oxford, to study English Literature.
While attending Oxford, Pike continued to act, and eventually took a year off in order to focus on her burgeoning career, focusing on the stage, she appeared in plays by David Hare, Arthur Miller and Shakespeare, as well as her first television roles, but returned to University and graduated with a 2:1.
Her career received a massive boost when, aged 22, she was cast as one of the Bond girls in Pierce Brosnan’s last outing as the character. Die Another Day may not have gone down as one of the best Bonds (it’s terrible from the theme tune on down), but Pike’s striking beauty and – ahem – icy performance as Miranda Frost were among the few memorable things in the film. For a while it seemed that Pike might suffer the curse of the Bond girl. Her next job was on stage in Hitchcock Blonde, which saw grainy snaps of her full frontal nude scenes run in the UK tabloids (classy as ever, the British press), and while 2004 saw her in two films, Promised Land was hardly seen and her role in the unsuccessful The Libertine was not all that prominent.
2005 was an odd year, with roles in two films that really couldn’t have been more opposing. She was radiant as the oldest Bennett sister in Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice (Wright also became her fiancée, but their wedding was called off in 2008, just before invitations were to be sent out) and she was in computer game adaptation Doom (and, like the film, was rather better than she needed to be). 2005 seems, for better or worse, to be the year that set a pattern for Pike’s career, and she continues to alternate mainstream and independent films.
2007 saw her in the mainstream Fracture and the smaller Fugitive Pieces (which I wanted to see for this article, but which is now deleted on DVD and costs about £100 on Amazon) but 2009 is really when everything changed, thanks to a supporting role in An Education, many reviews and awards season overlooked her in favour of Carey Mulligan, but casting directors seemed to have sat up and taken notice. Pike is now in great demand, and with well rated performances in Barney’s Version and Made in Dagenham behind her, and the likes of Johnny English Reborn shoring up her box office credentials 2012 and 2013 look set to be big years, she’ll soon be seen in Wrath of the Titans (which, annoyingly, means I shall have to see it) and early next year she’s opposite Tom Cruise in One Shot, which, hopefully, will bridge the critical and commercial divide for this ever more fascinating actress.
BEST PERFORMANCE: Barney’s Version
Rosamund Pike has made an impression, over the last few years, in supporting roles. This may be her biggest showcase to date, but it’s still essentially a supporting part, playing Paul Giamatti’s third wife, who he meets and falls instantly in love with at the reception for his wedding to his second wife (a flighty Minnie Driver).
Whenever an actor is presented with a character who is meant to represent the ideal of another character (in this case Giamatti’s Barney simply worships the ground she walks on) there is, I suspect, an easy way out in playing the perfect person that the other character sees. Pike doesn’t do that, which isn’t to say that she’s not radiantly beautiful, warm, funny and smart here, but the film and the performance always make clear that this isn’t a perfect person and nor is this a perfect relationship.
There are great moments sprinkled throughout the film (particularly in a relationship where it’s pretty clear Miriam is tempted to cheat on Barney), but her best scenes come towards the end of the film, as an older Barney and Miriam meet for the first time in a long while, even through the prosthetic ageing make up, we get a real sense from Pike (and Giamatti) of the history at work between these characters, of the sadness that both feel, but also of a fondness for the good times they had. It’s a rich and layered performance, and really the one that announced Rosamund Pike as much more than a scene stealer.
HIDDEN GEM: An Education
Okay, so An Education is hardly an unknown film, but it’s really Rosamund Pike’s performance that is the hidden gem we’re talking about here. Don’t get me wrong, Carey Mulligan is fantastic as Jenny, but right from the first time I saw the film I was knocked out by just how completely, and how apparently effortlessly, Pike steals every single scene that she’s in as Dominic Cooper’s terminally stupid girlfriend.
Playing a stupid character is a tightrope, because most stupid people don’t know that they are stupid, don’t even suspect it, and so an intelligent actor (as the tri-lingual Pike most certainly is) can’t seem to be in on the joke; you can’t ridicule the character. Pike walks this line perfectly, playing Helen with a perfectly hilarious mix of idiocy and superiority. Her utter astonishment at Mulligan’s Jenny speaking French is hilarious, as are the many little non-sequiters that she comes out with. It’s an extreme character, but Pike always keeps Helen just the right side of believably stupid.
ONE TO MISS: Fracture
Doom is definitely a bad movie, as is Johnny English Reborn, but neither is as comprehensive a waste of time and talent as this idiotic courtroom ‘thriller’. Director Gregory Hoblit proves unable to extract a performance from Anthony Hopkins (as a man manipulating the legal system to get away with killing his wife) or Ryan Gosling (as a young assistant DA) that can, like Edward Norton’s in Primal Fear, help the film overcome the fact that the story is utter nonsense.
Rosamund Pike is utterly wasted, in a thankless role as Gosling’s new boss (a role she’s too young for, just 27 or 28 and looking younger here) and lover. She has no real bearing on the plot and, like everyone else, seems bored by the role and the film (not that I can blame her). Fracture could have been campy fun, or even a surprise success like Primal Fear, but instead it’s just a bore.
Next Time: Ethan Hawke
