Rosamund Pike is keeping quiet about Gone Girl plot

Rosamund Pike is proof that first impressions don’t always count.

The first time we saw Rosamund Pike on the big screen was as a 21-year-old playing Bond Girl Miranda Frost in Die Another Day. Her main attributes for the role appeared to be that she was blonde and leggy.

And had she joined the scrapheap of beautiful young actresses who’d made their debuts in Bond movies only to realise that was to be their career high point, it wouldn’t have caught anyone by surprise.

But having trained herself to come across as a convincing Olympic fencing champion for that movie, Rosamund has gone on to prove she is a cut above the rest.

In films such as An Education, Made in Dagenham and current release What We Did On Our Holiday, she has continually reinvented herself the ditzy socialite girlfriend, the dutiful but intelligent upper class wife and caring mother seeking a divorce.

She’s at it again, impressively, in Gone Girl although it’s hard to explain just how good her performance is without giving a large part of the mystery thriller’s plot away. “I’ll gun down any questions that contain spoilers,” she warns me.

This is what we can say. Rosamund plays Amy Dunne, a rich, high-maintenance housewife, whose marriage to Nick (Ben Affleck) has hit a rough spot.

On the day of their fifth anniversary she goes missing and Nick becomes the prime suspect in her murder.

As the days tick by, clues begin to surface and their past is slowly revealed in flashback so the townspeople draw conclusions as to what might have happened.

Adapted from the best-selling novel by Gillian Flynn, Rosamund beat off competition from Natalie Portman, Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, Abbie Cornish and Olivia Wilde to play Amy and she knew it was a much sought-after role.

“It had come to me from so many different angles,” explains the 35-year-old. I’d heard talk about this book from young girls, men, so many different types of people, and the excitement around it is huge.

“Gone Girl was the prototype for a whole new generation of books, and Amy is a prototype for a lot of female protagonists. Certainly, I’ve never had a challenge like this, and I’ve craved to be stretched in the way this character has stretched me.”

Director David Fincher asked Rosamund to undergo a rigorous training regime to prepare her for the role, sharing a boxing ring with Women’s Welterweight Champ, Holly Lawson.

“When we met, he probably wanted to see if I was some precious little flower who didn’t want to get my hands dirty. Which is not the case at all,” she says firmly.

What could prove a career-defining role also comes at a time of great personal happiness for Rosamund, having announced in June she is pregnant with her second child. The baby is due next month.

“I remember, early in my career where I had to play a mother, and I’d meet this little child and he’d look at me very suspiciously as if to say: ‘No, you couldn’t be my mother’,” says the actress, who already has a two-year-old son, Solo, with boyfriend Robie Uniacke.

“Now, they just look and say: ‘Of course you can be my mother,’ and it’s really nice.”

She may have found contentment, but Pike’s had her share of heartbreak in the past.

She was engaged to director Joe Wright, who she met when he directed her in Pride & Prejudice but he dumped her abruptly just before the wedding, with reports at the time claiming he hadn’t liked the invites she’d sent out.

As readers of the novel will know, Gone Girl explores a seemingly loving relationship and reveals how we’re prepared to become someone else to suit the people around us whether it be friends, colleagues, or even our spouse.

“That’s what was really interesting,” says Rosamund.

“That Gillian is pointing to this moment in our rather narcissistic culture we’re trained to do it.

“Think about how many people are meeting their partners online. That’s all about setting a profile that improves upon your life, that edits it favourably and gives an illusion of who you are.

“So expectations are unrealistically high, and at a certain point, you realise the person you met is not the person they really are, because they were performing a version of themselves.”

Our Verdict

Those in the know about Gone Girl have voiced concerns that it would be impossible for David Fincher’s screen version to pack all the nuances of the book into two-and-a-half hours of celluloid.

Rest easy, Gillian Flynn fans, Fincher has done a fine job, making a taut mystery that is also a comment on modern media culture, the deceits that lie within relationships and, in places, a dark comedy.

Rosamund Pike is superb as Amy Dunne in all her guises, backed up by Ben Affleck, who is given less to play with as the hard-to-gauge husband Nick.

The film unravels a bit towards the end, and the soundtrack is a little overbearing at times, but that doesn’t prevent a trip to see Gone Girl from being a goer.

Gone Girl is at cinemas now.