Each weekend a profile on a just-opened Oscar contender. Here's abstew on this weekend's breakthrough leading lady. Mild tonal spoilers follow
Rosamund Pike as "Amazing Amy" in Gone Girl
Best Actress
Born: January 27, 1979 in London, England
The Role: Based on the best-selling novel from Gillian Flynn, Pike plays the beautiful, ideal "cool girl", Amy Dunne. After she and her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) find themselves unemployed and strapped for cash, they move back to Nick's hometown of North Carthage, Missouri. But the marriage isn't the idealic relationship it once was and on the morning of their 5th wedding anniversary, Amy goes missing - with Nick as the prime suspect. To say more would ruin the film, but let's just say that Amy looms large over the rest of the story...
Reese Witherspoon bought the rights to the book, hoping to cast herself as Amy. But when David Fincher came on board to direct, he had a very specific idea of the character in mind, citing Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy as his model and considered well-known stars like Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, Olivia Wilde, Abbie Cornish, and Julianne Hough (?!). Fincher went with Rosamund Pike because she wasn't as recognizable and he loved her "opacity" as an actress, having seen her in several films but never quite getting a read on her, allowing the mysterious character to remain so through her anonymity.
Previous Brushes with Oscar and Critical Takes after the jump...
Previous Brushes With Oscar: Pike has already co-starred in two films that brought Best Actress nominations to their leading ladies: Pride and Prejudice (2005) with Keira Knightley and An Education (2009) with Carey Mulligan. She also received some British awards attention for her supporting role in Made in Dagenham (2010), which never really caught on as an awards-hopeful in the US.
What Critics Are Saying:
"For Amy, many readers envisioned Cate Blanchett or Charlize Theron; each could play a blond vixen capable of seducing and scaring a husband. But instead, the role went to the lesser-known Rosamund Pike. (Among her roles in Hollywood films: Andromeda in Wrath of the Titans and Tom Cruise’s helper in Jack Reacher.) Pike’s relative unfamiliarity to the mass audience allows her to draw Amy in careful cursive on a blank slate."
- Richard Corliss Time
"With her serenely cool beauty, Pike is ideally cast in the role of the privileged, manipulative and calculating Amy. An under-utilized and terrific actress, the British Pike plays sophisticated New Yorker Amy impeccably."
-Claudia Puig USA Today
"As a toxic villain without much conviction, Ms. Pike manages to be both ravishing and riveting."
- Rex Reed New York Observer
"For Pike, a Brit best known for supporting roles, this is a smashing, award-caliber breakthrough you'll be talking about for years."
- Peter Travers Rolling Stone
My Take: Alfred Hitchcock once described Grace Kelly as a snow-covered volcano, with that cool exterior belying the fire burning beneath. Pike's work as Amy is a sister to Hitchcock Blondes, surely, but she's more like an ice berg than volcano; that visible chilly surface only a hint of the depths of jagged and treacherous shards hiding below. And that's ultimately the problem with Pike's performance as Amy, it's too distant, too stilted. She could've used some of that volcanic fire to give Amy life. Her Amy is calculated and ruthless, but there's not enough insight into the motivations. Even her voice-over, which should be giving us a look at her thoughts, seem highly implausible and Pike's delivery is too blasé to ever believe that this woman would do what she does.
Fun Fact: Rosamund Pike made her film debut as the icily named Bond Girl, Miranda Frost, in Die Another Day (2002). If she wins the Oscar, she will be the third actress to be both Bond Girl and Oscar winner after Kim Basinger's Domino Petachi in Never Say Never Again (1983) and Pike's own Bond co-star, Halle Berry as Jinx Johnson.
Probability of a Nomination: Likely. From the moment the book was announced as having a film adaptation, it seemed likely that whoever took on the meaty role of Amy Dunne would be be in the awards conversation. Fincher's past 3 films have brought Oscar nominations for their leads and there's no reason to believe that Pike won't join them. Especially because her journey - relative unknown landing a coveted role in a Fincher film based on an extremely popular novel - closely mirrors that of Oscar-nominee Rooney Mara in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.