[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ou might not have recognised Rosamund Pike before October of this year. Perhaps as the older sister in Pride and Prejudice, or from supporting roles in An Education and The World’s End. Her reserved beauty and lack of widespread recognition outside of England means she’s enjoyed a degree of anonymity. Until now, that is: with the highly anticipated release of David Fincher’s Gone Girl, Pike’s career has taken an exciting turn.

Unlike her cinematic counterpart, Pike is genuinely charming when she calls from her London home. At times over the interview, sounds of domesticity filter down the line: her young son’s chatter, queries about bathroom tiling — she’s taking a well earned break after the whirlwind of this year. So, how did she go about preparing for this career-defining role? Fincher pointed her in the direction of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the wife of John F. Kennedy Junior, “which was interesting because he basically gave me a cipher to look at. There really is nothing written about her, nothing in her own voice.” She also mentions a documentary called The Woman Who Wasn’t There (2012), and Sociopath World (an online blog for sociopaths) as sources in creating “somebody with a very fragile sense of self” who performs “some sort of false version of herself”. When she was flying back from meeting Fincher for the first time, there was, rather auspiciously, a Life magazine cover feature on John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn in the airport. Inside, “there were all these excruciating images; in Central Park; two tight heads at a dinner party, looking very hunted and haunted, and I thought, listen, he’s given me someone very hard to know.” Pike’s description of Carolyn Bassett-Kennedy merges undeniably into her interpretation of Amy Dunne in Gone Girl: “I thought, well, I don’t know how likeable she was, nor whether that was important — she had allure and she captivated people. She had a kind of huntress look in her eyes and liked testing people.”

One of the reasons Gone Girl has been gaining so much attention over the last couple of years, spanning the release of Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name in 2012 to the release of the film last month, is its exploration of a media-driven society, and the ensuing implications for its inhabitants, whose experience is mediated by the screen. A society, in Pike’s words, lacking “any real intimacy”, above all for Amy. So how did Pike go about playing a character who, in her own words, never really existed? “It’s not like you can suddenly relax and think, ‘Oh I’ve got this character now, I know who she is’, because you’re constantly changing.” Performing a performer was a challenging, but enjoyable, role: “The kind of stuff that was very anxiety-making at the beginning— not knowing how you’re going to do it — becomes the most fun.” There is a scene where Amy is watching herself on TV, trapped by her own image, an instance of self-inflicted voyeurism: “She is the ultimate narcissist, and the narcissist is the person who is deeply insecure.” Pike thinks what is so sinister about Amy is that under this myriad of projected selves, there is no essence, no centre: “When other people try on roles usually you know who the real person is, but with Amy you never know who [that] is.”

Pike expands on the insecurity perpetrated by such a voyeuristic, spectacle-driven society, illustrating her point with the all-too-familiar case of a celebrity meltdown: “It’s a sort of unearned fame that gives someone a very insecure sense of self, because they’ve got recognition but they haven’t earned it […] it’s sort of fame outweighing respect, or something like that.” Her own skyrocketing fame with Gone Girl is neither unearned nor preemptive. Acting professionally since her college days, Pike landed the role of Bond girl Miranda Frost alongside Pierce Brosnan at the tender age of 21, thereafter consistently earning parts on the screen and stage. At the age of 35, with an impressive body of work behind her (unaccompanied by any major scandals for the media to latch onto), it’s arguably the ideal moment in a career to have landed such a seminal role.

In fact it was Pike’s own relative lack of celebrity that led Fincher to cast her. She recalls how Fincher told her he’d always been drawn to her performances, and her undefinability as an actor: “I think he said, ‘I’ve always been drawn to your performances […] every actor has their skill set and also their limits, but I couldn’t really pin down what yours were.’” An interesting parallel here is between Pike’s liminality as an actor and the inscrutability of the character she plays, and how (rather like the film) Fincher’s casting choice subverts expectations. She laughs, “I am probably just the sort of level where people could think, ah yes, I can see why she got to play that role, but I can also see why she was content to play the dead girl!” Well, not any more. The Oscars are looming, and there is talk of both Best Picture and Best Actress nominations for Gone Girl.

Fincher’s directorial approach is notoriously tough on his actors, and Pike expands on her experience of the dynamic on set: “You’re constantly sort of getting to know each other and exploring one another […] your job as an actor is to service the director’s vision, and after six months I think you have a much clearer idea of what you’re working for.” Pike describes this process as “a dance really — you’re constantly dancing around one another”. A rigorous process, but with scope for improvisation too: “Some things are meticulously planned, and some things just burst out of the scenario, they’re kind of unhinged and exciting for that reason.”

There has been a degree of ambivalence in the reception of Pike’s character as a potentially sexist construct. Does she think that Amy rehashes narratives of the woman as the liar and manipulator of the unwitting man, and of female jealousy and revenge? She points out, “In the past there have been other films with ‘female psychos’, where the woman’s a sort of hysteric, and Amy is not that. There is something very, very modern about that: she’s able to manipulate, she’s powerful, she’s clever.” A contemporary twist, perhaps, on de Beauvoir’s well-worn phrase, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”, whereby Amy is in control of her constructed self. Pike explains: “Yes, she uses sexuality at times, but she’s not powerful because she uses sexuality like a lot of other strong women that we see in movies do — they’re either strong because they exhibit the qualities of a man, or they use sex. Amy’s neither of those. I don’t think Amy could have been a man.”

Is it possible then that an exploration of femininity, in its various forms, is the perfect metaphor to portray a society that uses images and personas to manipulate its audience? Pike isn’t so sure. She agrees that many women might identify with the notion of playing roles to seduce the person they want to be esteemed by — something not inherently troubling, and something that men do too, but she reckons women are probably better at it. Perhaps the point being made is that society is sociopathic in its lack of any real empathy. Its presiding obsession with spectacle and voyeurism means its concern is ultimately gratuitous, rather than moral. Indeed the film, which starts off as a more subtle social satire and psychological drama, descends almost into farce, which Pike says was a lot of fun to shoot: “Towards the latter scenes of the movie when the audience are enlightened, they can then enjoy the lies, the insanity of it. It was pure Fincher.”

Pike thinks that the success of the film signals an important fact about the mainstream consumption of cinema: “If Gone Girl proves one thing, it’s that adults will flock to see something that is stimulating, not in any way patronising to the audience’s intelligence, and that makes everybody think.” Pike has also played some pretty challenging theatre roles in the past, including the title character in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (2010, considered the equivalent of Hamlet for female actors), and starring in Hitchcock Blonde (2003) by contemporary playwright Terry Johnson. The latter ran at The Royal Court, which was “the pioneer of some of the most exciting plays of the 20th century — to feel a part of that is really exhilarating”. Hedda Gabler, she muses, seductive, brilliant, and slightly unhinged, was a forerunner to Amy: “I think probably Hedda is in there in me somewhere, because she’s someone who’s different but she’s certainly able to seduce people.” Gone Girl is the high point in a career that has sought roles that challenge both the viewing public, and Pike as an actor.

For her, such roles (whether in avant garde theatre or blockbuster cinema) are really about hitting “that cultural pulse”. It’s been “a very exciting moment” for Pike, to be part of something that’s generated critical debate as well as box office success, “I mean that’s the goal isn’t it? The ultimate goal.” In the future, Pike is interested in continuing to work with “the popular, I have a huge respect for the audience — without them I have no job”. Nonetheless the theatre still holds sway for her — classic stage roles such as Hedda Gabler she thinks are enduring “because they’re wonderful constructs” — and if she returns, it will be in something that has the same feeling of cultural relevancy as Gone Girl.

Though Pike has shown her fluidity as an actor, the limitlessness that drew Fincher to her, there is definitely a trend in the characters she has played, that embodies a complex rendering of male fantasies and female selfhood. Such as Hedda, who, 120 years before Gone Girl, posed a challenge to notions of the feminine and its role in society: “She’s sort of restless and impatient, and burns too brightly, but also doesn’t have the authenticity of self to really be a great person.” It’s fair to say this evaluation does not apply to Pike who, although she burns brightly, doesn’t seem like she’ll be going anywhere anytime soon.