Pike spills beans on dark thriller

Published Oct 13, 2014

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English actress Rosamund Pike first tasted fame with her role as Bond Girl Miranda Frost in Die Another Day (2002). Since then, she has starred in acclaimed films and box office successes, including Jack Reacher, The World’s End and Wrath of the Titans. She was was also featured in An Education, nominated for Best Picture at the 2010 Academy Awards.

David Fincher, the Academy Award-nominated director behind Seven, Fight Club and The Social Network, has completed production on his 10th feature, Gone Girl.

He interviewed his leading actress, Rosamund Pike.

FINCHER: Had you read Gillian Flynn’s best-seller when you were first contacted about playing Amy?

PIKE: Don’t you remember? We started our first conversation when I was a third of the way through.

FINCHER: It’s a totally different story at that point.

PIKE: Exactly, but I remember saying: “I don’t fully trust the voice of this character, because I don’t like her, and I know I’m being asked to like this woman.”

I mistrust people who seem… well, the ideal wife. She’s fun-loving, carefree, easygoing, and every time her man screws up, she just says: “Oh, it’s fine.” I thought: “I don’t necessarily trust this.” Or else I was just mad at a woman who’s able to put up with more than I can.

FINCHER: What was your take on the material and the character?

PIKE: It disturbs you in a way you can’t quite process. The book gets under your skin: you’re dealing with people who know each other so well; familiarity can breed something quite sinister. It’s a game about two players and how they play each other.

FINCHER: Was Amy somebody that you wanted to play?

PIKE: Without a doubt! Amy is that rare thing – a multidimensional female character that lets you explore the less commonly revealed facets of being a woman. Writers tend to create strong female characters who derive their strength either from their ability to adopt masculine characteristics or by using their sexuality.

What made me want to play Amy was that her considerable strength is neither masculine nor sexual – it is female. Gillian (Flynn), through Amy, articulates ideas that I’ve never read before about relationships.

Amy is an actress – and a good one – and that is interesting to play.

Everybody these days knows how to perform; they’re editing their lives, showing favourable images of themselves.

FINCHER: Do you normally enjoy a popular literary phenomenon?

PIKE: I feel there’s an obligation to read them. That said, I’ve not read 50 Shades of Grey. But I feel one has to be aware of them.

FINCHER: Were you reticent to read this because it was a best-seller?

PIKE: No, because it entered my consciousness in a very interesting way, not by everybody saying: “You have to read it.” It was the variety of people who mentioned it in passing that fascinated me.

FINCHER: Do you think that the marriage described in this story is universal or is it American? Nick and Amy seem very much a part of aspirational happiness fantasies. Did it seem universal, or more like it was talking about the US?

PIKE: I didn’t feel like it was specifically American. They could be anywhere. The French have a clause in law that means you can get off for a crime of passion. So they must have had a few relationships go this way. I think it’s everywhere. The narcissism epidemic is probably everywhere, maybe particularly in the US.

FINCHER: Tell us about the audition process.

PIKE: It was bizarre! Drinks, psychological profiling, neurosurgery, MRI scans…

FINCHER: What was your response to other cast members as they were being assembled?

PIKE: You have the luxury, it seems, that very few people have of casting who you want or who’s in your head. I really hoped when Ben’s (Affleck) name was mentioned that he would end up doing it, because I sensed that he was someone who would have the humility to let himself give in to the current of this story. I thought that he was smart enough and cool enough.

FINCHER: Would you categorise the film as a drama, a thriller or a satire?

PIKE: It’s probably different for everyone watching it. Someone can say it’s one, and somebody else will say it’s another. I love the fact that we’re selling it as a thriller. That feels completely right.

FINCHER: Do you think it was a benefit to have the novelist as the screenwriter?

PIKE: I think it was. She gave me some music references that she was listening to while she was writing, and she told me the books she’d read while writing Gone Girl. I had never read anything like those before. Did Gillian ever say to you: “That bit is not really Amy.” Or did she ever see something she felt was “un-Amy-ish”, and then you brought it back to me?

FINCHER: No. It is an enormously collaborative endeavour, and I think Gillian was a great collaborator. There was never this sort of resistance, or: “Well, I always saw it this way.” It was like, now we tailor the clothes for the wearer. We have to tailor this scene for the person who’s playing it.

PIKE: She obviously had an Amy in her head. I have no idea whether I matched it or if I completely differed from it, but she was totally open to multiple versions. I know that she was completely ecstatic about the casting of Ben.

FINCHER: Ben said: “Here’s what I see in this guy, and here’s what I relate to. Here’s where I think my strengths lend themselves to the telling of the story, but I’m also willing to do all the research to see it in another way as well.” What about you? Did you find any character traits you thought were helpful to him being Nick?

PIKE: Well, I think he’s a real guy’s guy. And approachable, and very funny. Ben is clearly clever enough to be the mastermind in a film, but then he lets himself be perplexed by somebody who’s outplaying him. And then, of course, we get to turn everything on its head. We get to explore in the ultimate phases of the movie what it is about the most toxic relationships that keep us coming back for more, that somehow a certain toxicity can complete a very ugly part of ourselves that something more sane and sensible does not.

That’s what the book’s dealing with in a sense – all of that stuff. I loved it. I’m always teetering between someone who’s very sensible and very cautious, and someone who is the complete opposite of those things. And that’s sort of my continual dilemma, between someone who is reckless and impulsive, and someone who is very emotional and cautious. Sometimes I’m calm, and sometimes very, very angry. I have both things.

FINCHER: When you saw the film, was it sharper or blunter, more or less salacious, than you thought it would be?

PIKE: When Ben and I were doing the early dating scenes, they felt romantic. Then I realised this film has no place for romance. That was sort of an illusion.

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