Rosamund Pike Is Delighted to Appall You - The New York Times

Feb 19, 2021

Best known for her titular role in “Gone Girl,” the British actress stars as another seductively dangerous character in the new Netflix film “I Care a Lot.”.

“There are two types of people in this world,” says the coolly assured voice of Rosamund Pike, playing Marla Grayson, in the opening voice-over of “I Care a Lot” as the camera slowly pans over the dazed-looking inhabitants of a nursing home.

Pike, the British actress best known for her Oscar-nominated performance in “Gone Girl,” is the blazing star of “I Care a Lot,” written and directed by J.

“Marla is like a scrappy street fighter in designer clothing,” Pike said in a recent video interview from Prague.

Perhaps that’s because although she might have successfully specialized playing the English rose (see her turn as Jane Bennett in Joe Wright’s 2005 “Pride and Prejudice”), Pike has never allowed herself to be pigeonholed by prettiness.

She has spoofed the British spy film in “Johnny English Reborn,” acted opposite Tom Cruise in the action thriller “Jack Reacher,” and played a hilariously clueless socialite in “An Education,” the hard-bitten reporter Marie Colvin in “A Private War” and the enigmatic Amy of “Gone Girl.”.

“In ‘I Care a Lot,’ playing a character that couldn’t be more unlike her as a person, you are reminded of just how good she is.”.

She did not do much about it, she said, until she was 16, when she saw a flyer at her school for the National Youth Theater, a British institution that has built a reputation for producing actors like Daniel Craig, Colin Firth and Helen Mirren.

“I couldn’t have been less appropriate, but luckily they could see beyond that.” But although she was praised for her part in the movie — her first film role — Pike said it opened few doors.

“Things are funny because they are true, and someone like Rosamund who plays so truthfully can be very funny,” said David Tennant, who co-starred with Pike in the British dramedy “What We Did on our Holiday.” For comedy, he added, “you need a lightness of touch, a deftness, you need to come to work with a bit of joy — all qualities that Rosamund has.”

The character of Marla Grayson in “I Care a Lot” shares certain traits with Amy — notably the deployment of femininity as both a weapon and a performance — but Pike was slightly indignant at the suggestion that the characters were similar