ACTING SMART

Storytelling is no doubt integral to the art of acting, but for Rosamund Pike, narration feels like something the Oscar nominee truly lives and breathes. Catching up with Pike on the eve of the BFI London Film Festival, where she was presenting a special award, the former Bond girl said: “The thing that struck me about the stories in tonight’s award was how personal they felt. It’s a personal expression and people in control of their own narratives. It makes you think why film is so vital.”

Pike certainly feels like a woman in control of her own story. last interviewed the British actress in 2016, a year after her Oscar nod for playing Amy Dunne in the psychological, (2014), and fresh from lending her voice to the sci-fi animation series and playing a rape-victim-turned-vigilante in the revenge story, (2015). Since then, Pike’s roles have included the wife of a Nazi leader (, 2017), a lone settler-survivor in a harrowing American Western (, 2017), a CIA agent in Beirut co-starring opposite Jon Hamm (, 2018) and a gun-wielding German revolutionary (, 2018).