“There are two types of people in this world,” says Rosamund Pike’s calmly assured voice, playing Marla Grayson, in the opening voice of “I Care a Lot”, as the camera slowly passes over the stunned-looking inhabitants of a house rest. “The people who take it and those who are being taken.”
From the first photo of the back of Marla’s sharp blond hair, it’s clear which category she belongs to. A ruthlessly amoral and icy and self-confident con man, she perfectly plays the role of a conscientious court-mandated guardian, while skillfully separating the protected elderly in her care from their families and bank accounts.
Pike, the British actress best known for her Oscar-nominated performance in “Gone Girl”, is the burning star of “I Care a Lot”, written and directed by J. Blakeson, which arrives on Netflix on Friday. Pike has already received a Golden Globe nomination for the role, in which she is frighteningly villainous and seductively fearless, a true anti-heroine who does very bad things with pleasure.
“Marla is like a street fighter in designer clothes,” said Pike in a recent video interview from Prague. “It was a deep dive to find a place where I could be hungry for money, the hunger to win, the conviction that your own goal is more important than anything else.”
All are traits “that are often not portrayed by women in films,” she added.
Pike, 42, is incredibly beautiful, with flawless peach and cream skin and straight blond hair. Articulate and attentive during the interview, she considered the questions carefully, sometimes leaving the track: “I wish I could ask you some questions, ”she said at one point.
Pike, who came into the spotlight at the age of 21 as a Bond girl in “Die Another Day”, had a successful acting career for more than two decades, but she never acquired – or apparently aspired to – the megafam of some of her peers.
Perhaps it is because, although she might have successfully specialized in playing the English rose (see her turn as Jane Bennett in Joe Wright’s 2005 “Pride and Prejudice”), Pike never allowed herself to be labeled for beauty. She faked the British spy movie in “Johnny English Reborn”, acted alongside Tom Cruise in the action thriller “Jack Reacher” and played a hilarious and clueless socialite in “An Education”, the tough reporter Marie Colvin in “A Private War ”and the enigmatic Amy from“ Gone Girl ”.
“I think she is sometimes circumvented because she rarely shows up in her roles,” said Blakeson. “I am confused that she did not win the Oscar for ‘Lost Girl'”.
Blakeson added that he had wanted to work with Pike for a long time. “It is different everywhere; you never know what you’re going to get, ”he said. “In ‘I Care a Lot’, playing a character who couldn’t be more different from her as a person, you remember how good she is.”
Pike grew up in London, the only son of two opera singers who spent a lot of time on the road while traveling from job to job. She said she knew she would be an actress at around 4 years old. “You grow up in a creative home and you take it in,” she said. “Adults for me were people who could play and tell stories in attractive ways. I sat for hours rehearsing operas and trying to find out why I believed in things or not. I found a kind of magic in the theater; it seemed like a good place where I belonged. “
She didn’t do much about it, she said, until she was 16, when she saw a pamphlet 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. Pike auditioned, was accepted, and spent the next two years performing with the group, eventually playing the heroine in “Romeo and Juliet”.
Her performance as Julieta gave Pike an agent (with whom she is still), a fact she kept secret when she went to Oxford University. “I would secretly go to London to audition for things that most of the time I wouldn’t understand, and I asked myself, ‘Is he going to give up on me?’ Pike also served at the university – “a hotbed of opportunity for failure,” she said dryly.
She traveled a little after graduation, coming back in time to audition for Bond’s film. “I had disheveled hair, in a cardigan and old jeans,” she said. “I couldn’t have been less appropriate, but luckily they managed to see beyond that.” But although she was praised for her role in the film – her first film role – Pike said it opened some doors.
She went back to work on stage, performing in Terry Johnson’s “Hitchcock Blonde” at the Royal Court, which she described as a highlight of her career. Since then, however, she has worked mainly in cinema and has been attracted to characters based on real-life figures, including Ruth Williams, wife of Seretse Khama, Botswana’s first president, in “A United Kingdom,” Marie Colvin in “A Private War ”and Marie Curie in“ Radioactive ”.
“She could easily have continued to play a beautiful blonde, the object of desire,” said Marjane Satrapi, the director of “Radioactive”. “It would have been easy for her, but instead, she took on roles that are more challenging than the others. She is an actress who is not afraid to grow old, who finds this interesting. “
Pike said the studios rarely saw her as a comedian, but she showed that she can be in the recent BBC series “State of the Union”, for which she won an Emmy. “Maybe people will notice now,” she said.
“Things are funny because they are true, and someone like Rosamund, who plays with such sincerity can be very funny,” said David Tennant, who starred with Pike in the British drama “What We Did on our Holiday”. For comedy, he added, “you need a light touch, a dexterity, to come to work with a little bit of joy – all the qualities that Rosamund has”.
It was “Gone Girl”, from 2014, that proved to be Pike’s innovative role. “It gave me a chance to learn more about acting in the cinema than ever before,” she said. “I was able to show every part of being a woman – being extreme, dangerous, sweet, docile, vulnerable. It was the first time that I managed to achieve a freedom on the screen that I only felt on stage before. “
Marla Grayson’s character in “I Care a Lot” shares certain traits with Amy – notably the use of femininity both as a weapon and as a performance – but Pike was slightly indignant at the suggestion that the characters were similar.
“I saw them as totally different,” she said. “I would never want to do a ‘Lost Girl’ sub. For me, Marla was more of an accurate shot, think about your feet, person. “
“It was important for us that it was fun for the audience and that the dark side of comedy was rooted in the truth,” she added. “What are the values in America? What do you gain respect for? Cash.”
She thought for a while, then smiled: “Being able to taste and watch with terrifying horror and joy – people like that.”