Rosamund Pike: Fully Titular In “GONE GIRL”
Regarded as a contemporary and multifaceted actress, Rosamund
Pike, who has has earned international acclaim for both her stage and film
roles goes fully titular in the movie adaptation of the bestselling novel by
Gillian Flynn of the same title in “Gone Girl.”
Under
the direction of acclaimed filmmaker David Fincher, known for his thrilling
works in “Fight Club,” “Sev7n,” “The Social Network,” “Zodiac” and “Panic
Room,” Pike gives the audience an unforgettable portrayal of Amy Dunne, a woman
gone missing on the morning of their fifth year wedding anniversary. Playing opposite Ben Affleck as Nick Dunne,
the better half and the prime suspect of Amy’s disappearance – “Gone Girl”
opens up a vault of ugly truths on a marriage gone really bad.
In “Gone Girl,” Amy Dunne is
gone. But at the same time that she
disappears into thin air, she becomes an omnipresent media sensation, the
paragon of all the beautiful, fragile things that are too easily lost in the world. That is how she is now known throughout
America. Yet that is not her only
identity.
Indeed, Amy never developed a single
persona. She grew up in the long shadow
of her psychologist parents’ popular children’s books about her alter-ego: the impossibly perfect “Amazing Amy.” Later, she morphed into the woman she
believed her Nick most desired: the perfect “cool girl,” as sexed-up and
playfully easy-going as she is on top of things. Then, after moving to Nick’s
recession-ravaged hometown in Missouri, leveraging her trust fund in the
process, Amy took on new facets.
So just who is Amy Dunne? That is the bottomless abyss into which
actress Rosamund Pike descended. A
London native, Pike came to the fore as a Bond Girl in “Die Another Day,” and
went on to roles in “Pride and Prejudice,” “An Education,” “Jack Reacher” and “World’s
End.” But Amy would take Pike into fresh
challenges as a character with unending layers that peel away to leave no solid
center.
Pike recalls being drawn instantly towards
the book’s inky, x-ray view of the underside of marital bliss. “I was quite intrigued by this idea of
marriage as con game – the idea that we’re all selling a version of ourselves,”
she muses. “And Amy is such a remarkable
creation. It fascinated me that she is
always performing, perhaps in part because it points back to the life of an
actor. The challenge of being Amy is
that nothing that happens with her is quite what it seems on the surface.”
That was both the challenge and the
allure. She continues: “In playing Amy, I get to explore so many
different aspects of the feminine brain.
There are scenes where Amy is playing two different things to two
different people in the same room – and the audience has to see both.”
In the beginning, Pike believes Amy
hoped to construct the perfect relationship.
“Those early glory days were really fun for her,” says the actress, “but
they weren’t sustainable. “When things
started to go wrong – when Nick’s mother got cancer, when Amy’s parents started
having financial troubles – the marriage changed. I think Amy felt she showed her real self and
Nick didn’t like it.”
Playing Amy took Pike through
physical and emotional extremes. “The
challenge was peeling back one layer after another of the onion that is this
marriage,” she comments. But she says
along with the challenges came rich rewards, especially working with Fincher. “David is so detailed in the most
psychologically observant ways . . . and because he wants to explore
everything, he leaves you feeling that no stone was left unturned,” she says.
Fincher has reciprocal respect for
Pike. “Amy is a very, very tricky part,”
he says. “The audience should have no
idea what she’s going to do next. I’d seen Rosamund’s work and I was struck by
the fact that I couldn’t get a read on her. There was something about the way
she catches the light in a different way… you don’t really have a grasp of who
she is. The most important aspect of Amy for me was that I needed the feeling
of an only child. I needed an
orchid. I needed a hothouse flower. Rosamund had that thing and she’s also
impeccably craft oriented, luminously beautiful and incredibly watchable. I know there were people saying, this is a
risk. But when I sat with her I saw that
this was somebody who was going to give you everything.”
Watch the official trailer of "Gone Girl" here:
Watch the official trailer of "Gone Girl" here:
“Gone Girl” is now showing in cinemas nationwide from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.
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