Following her Academy Award–nominated turn in “Gone Girl,” it’s hard to deny that Rosamund Pike has a knack for portraying, frankly, sociopaths. And her latest role, in Netflix’s sardonic thriller “I Care a Lot,” fits right into the canon. Though her character, Marla Grayson, could not be more different from Pike herself, she knew just how to prepare: “I vaped a lot, and I went to some spin classes.”
What about this character and story made you want to sign on?
Well, I was waiting for someone to give a woman the opportunity that Leonardo DiCaprio had in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” This seemed to me to come pretty close in terms of behaving badly. I think it’s really relaxing for an audience not to have to feel anything for her. Sometimes it’s nice to [elicit] a lot of empathy, but sometimes that’s really hard work, and sometimes we just want to be taken on a ride. I think there’s nothing you have to empathize about with Marla. You can disapprove of her or like her, but she’s not asking for your sympathy. She’s just asking for your admiration.
Did you do anything specific when preparing to play her?
Well, I vaped a lot, and I went to some spin classes, drank a lot of smoothies. On a more serious note, I made sure I understood the heritage of female antiheroines. I wanted to look at other films that have unlikable female characters and see how far [they] could push it and have them still be fun to watch. It was also finding that lioness quality in her body language, which, weirdly enough—I’d never done a spin class in my life, but once I realized that you kind of hunker forward on the bike, I thought, This is quite predatory. Just finding the truth of her, finding my Marla backstory. I don’t have to encumber an audience with that, but I have to know it.
“I didn’t identify with anything about Marla and I found it utterly liberating. I had fun playing a character who is devoid of shame, who is ruthlessly ambitious, and so without compunction.”
What are the steps you typically take to get inside your characters’ heads and understand how their brains work?
Who they are, who they’ve loved, who they love now, what their childhood was like, what they want in a bigger picture, what they want scene by scene, what they care about, what scares them—all those questions, you have to be able to answer. Do they have flaws? How much do they show them? How do they talk? What are their rhythms? How do they walk? Finding how they look, too. We found Marla’s haircut to be crucial to her, really, and what she wore. She’s more about attitude than she is about things. She’s not defined by the car she drives or the house she lives in; she’s defined by who she is and what she wants: She doesn’t want to be fucked over, and she wants to be rich.
With a character like that, do you have to, if not like her, at least identify with her?
I didn’t identify with anything about Marla, and I found it utterly liberating. I had fun playing a character who is devoid of shame, who is ruthlessly ambitious and so without compunction. She’s able to put on a face for whatever is required. I enjoy characters who “act,” as well. Like Amy Dunne in “Gone Girl”—she was able to act to her advantage. Amy was so strategic in her planning, so meticulous. Marla will bring whatever the situation needs, but she’ll bring it in the moment rather than plan 65 steps in advance like Amy Dunne does.
What performance should every actor see and why?
I’d say Celia Johnson in “Brief Encounter,” because to me, that’s just beautiful acting, beautiful delivery, total naturalism. It’s pretty flawless in my opinion.
Do you have an audition horror story you can share?
Going to my “Bond” audition [for “Die Another Day”] with my mother’s concert dress from [when she was] an opera singer, thinking that was exactly the kind of dress I should wear. I took it out of the bag, and the costume designer said, “Yes, that it is a very lovely dress, but Bond girls tend to wear something more like this.” And she held up what looked like about three pieces of string. So, that. That’s the archetypal one.
10 Wild Things These Actors Did to Win Auditions What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done to get a role?
I flew to St. Louis to meet David Fincher [for “Gone Girl”] when I was on another job. The morning I was expected in Glasgow, I was flying back from St. Louis, knowing that four times a week, this flight coming in was late. My call time was at 6:30, and the flight, when on time, landed at 7 a.m. Production thought I’d been in Scotland the whole weekend, when I’d actually been halfway across the world. They never would have let me go—and I had to go.
I always wonder whether that was a test by Fincher. I had to come up with a plan: I had to have my partner say that I’d gone to A&E [accident and emergency services] with a dental problem. I’d planted the idea that I had a toothache on the Friday before. I mean, it was so hammy; it was so un-Amy. I’ve learned a lot from Amy Dunne since then, and I think she would’ve rolled her eyes in despair…. My partner picked me up from the airport, and I got to set clutching my mouth and pretending I had a toothache.
How did you get your SAG membership?
I should’ve gotten it when I did “Fracture” with Ryan Gosling, but I didn’t know that one had to be a member of SAG. So there was a sort of alarming late-night call saying I might not be allowed to go to work the next day because I didn’t have Screen Actors Guild membership. It was my naiveté about everything that I didn’t know that was an obligation, and they assumed that I had it. I did get it for that, eventually.
“Control what you can control, which is your inner life, and let other people deal with the outside.”
What advice would you give your younger self?
Watch loads of American films, make loads of American friends, preferably have an American lover, and make sure that you can really speak American. Even if you think you might be able to because you have English as a first language, that is not a passport to being able to speak American. And now I can be as free in American as I can be in English; but that took time, and what you need is freedom as an actor.
I suppose the other thing is, don’t worry what you look like, because that’s somebody else’s department. Control what you can control, which is your inner life, and let other people deal with the outside. It’s actually best to present yourself as a blank canvas, however scary that might seem. You’ll always have the most interesting journeys if you’re open to transformation and you let somebody else help you transform rather than trying to cling to the lip gloss that you think you look great in.
This story originally appeared in the Feb. 18 issue of Backstage Magazine. Subscribe here.
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