The warm sun and cold shoulder of Rosamund Pike in 'Saltburn'

The actress speaks with a refinement that says, although she may not have been born into Elspeth's manor, she at least knows those who have. In Rosamund Pike's clever hands, the "Saltburn" character is plenty salty, and her targets feel her burns — of the freezer variety. Elspeth is a virtuoso at the warm sun/cold shoulder art of manipulation, whose elegant gazes of cool disapproval can slam doors.

"I do want you; I want all of you," says Pike in character (though by Zoom), "until you don't interest me anymore."

In "," as the matriarch of the fabulously wealthy clan luring its son's ('s) working-class college mate () into its clutches for a summer, the actor, who surpassed chilly for full-on chilling in 2014's "Gone Girl," could draw on her own run-ins with the British class system for inspiration.