For the first 30 minutes of Gone Girl, which opened last night to near-unanimous critical praise, I hated Rosamund Pike. I thought she was doing a terrible job, a false performance in a role that demanded brutal honesty. Then, sometime between the on-screen debut of the best movie cat since Inside Llewyn Davis and when we see Ben Affleck’s penis, I realized something: that’s the point.
I don’t want to give anything away, because Gone Girl is one of the better “LA LA LA I HEAR YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS MOVIE AND I HAVEN’T SEEN IT YET AND I DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS LA LA LA” films in recent memory, and Pike’s a big reason why. She’s fantastic, as is Carrie Coon (The Leftovers) and even Tyler Perry, and you should expect to hear a lot more about her throughout the year, particularly once the most dreaded of seasons, Oscar season, rolls around.
Gone Girl is a long time coming for the London-born Pike, who’s had some high-profile roles in very good movies, yes, but she’s also been in a ton of nothing that you still probably paid to see for some reason (looking at you, Wrath of the Titans, though I wish I wasn’t). Here’s a brief tour through her filmography.
2002 — Die Another Day as Miranda Frost
2004 — The Libertine as Elizabeth Malet
2005 — Pride & Prejudice as Jane Bennet
2005 — Doom as Samantha Grimm
2009 — An Education as Helen
2009 — Surrogates as Maggie Greer
2010 — Barney’s Version as Miriam
2011 — Johnny English Reborn as Kate Sumner
2012 — Wrath of the Titans as Queen Andromeda
2012 — Jack Reacher as Helen Rodin
2013 — The World’s End as Sam Chamberlain
To promote The World’s End, she also did a memorable Esquire photoshoot:
That’s our Gone Girl!
