China and Chinese culture are very important for my family.\' said Rosamund Pike. Pic by Zhu Chao
Rosamund Pike shared her love for China. Pic by Zhu Chao
By Liza Li(Shanghai Daily)
Academy Award nominated British actress Rosamund Pike is attending this year’s Shanghai International Film Festival. After she joined the screening of “Gone Girl” at the Grand Theatre on June 17, she met with the press yesterday and shared how she played her role as Amy Elliott-Dunne in “Gone Girl” as well as her love for China.
Last year Pike gave herself a Chinese name, Pei Chunhua because she thought the transliteration of her English name is long and not very feminine.
She explained she chose the Chinese name because Pei is a traditional Chinese last name, Chun represents the idea of pure and honesty, a characteristic she’d like to embody, and Hua has the same sound as the character meaning flower, as Rosamund means rose of the world.
“China and Chinese culture are very important for my family, my husband is learning Chinese, he speaks to my son only in Mandarin,” Pike said.
Pike was casted as the Bond girl in Die Another Day (2002) right after she graduated from school, and now when she picks projects to work on, she said it’s about which director she would want to work with.
In psychological thriller Gone Girl directed by David Fincher, Pike portrayed the sociopathic character Amy Elliott-Dunne, a very complicated role to play.
“Amy presented one face to the world and underneath she’s someone else,” Pike said about this character.
She said Amy has very high expectations, and she feels very entitled to get whatever she wants.
“I had to find some truth, you can’t just play a villain, you have to understand where her energy and anger come from,” she said.
The shooting of Gone Girl was also hard. Because of the shooting schedule, Pike had to gain and lose weight several times for the role.
After finishing Gone Girl, Pike wished to do a real love story, and she will star in drama A United Kingdom with co-star David Oyelowo, who had successfully portrayed the role of Dr. Martin Luther King, JR. in Selma.
“It’s a great love story set in the 1940s between England and Botswana,” Pike said.
During this trip to Shanghai, Pike has also explored the city. She went to the zoo to see pandas, and she’s also happy when people are calling her Pei and a lot of people are recognizing her here in China.
“We just want to feel the city for real,” Pike said.