Is there anyone with more perfect features than Rosamund Pike? Possibly, but only slightly. Also, super talented actress in both period and modern-set films. She’s done more than just Jane in Pride & Prejudice, so let’s do the thing, shall we?
Wives & Daughters (1999)
She’s the daughter of the hoity toity aristocratic family, who has a smart head on her shoulders and Gets Shit Done.
That double-parted hair is SO 1830s!
Weirdly wearing a more 1820s waistline in the 1830s…
But you can’t go wrong with a good riding habit!
Love in a Cold Climate (2001)
1930s-set adaptation of two novels by Nancy Mitford, loosely based on in some parts on the Mitford sisters. (Don’t know the Mitford sisters? GET ON IT, they are fabulously interesting!). Rosamund plays steady Fanny.
Ooo that hat!
The sweet hair and printed dress perfectly suit her character.
Foyle’s War (2002)
In one episode (“The German Woman”) of this 1940s-set detective series.
I do love ’40s hair!
The Libertine (2004)
As the overlooked wife of Johnny Depp’s seriously fucked up John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, the titular libertine (and, woo boy, was he).
Posing for a portrait with her hubby.
Nice dress, dialing it in on the hair.
Ditto.
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
As older sister Jane Bennett in the Jane Austen adaptation featuring far too many pigs. Pike was good though!
My kingdom for a comb!
Hey, at least she’s doing (serious) wisps instead of bangs!
“Dear Bennett girls: homespun is no longer in style.”
An Education (2009)
As the girlfriend of a mid-30s man who is trying to seduce a teenage girl in England in the 1960s; she’s the older, sophisticated character to Carey Mulligan’s ingenue.
I do loves me a good bouffant, and that’s some great jewelry!
Tied together through leopard print!
Made in Dagenham (2010)
A cute film about a 1968 labor strike led by women in England; Pike has a supporting role (can’t quite remember, she’s maybe a secretary? Boss’s wife?).
Just plain cute!
Women in Love (2011)
An adaptation of a D.H. Lawrence novel that underwhelmed me. Pike plays Gudrun, the arty sister to Rachael Stirling’s Ursula.
I love stripes, and I love a sailor collar!
This feels like it came from Talbot’s.
But THAT HAT! <3
A United Kingdom (2016)
As Ruth Williams Khama, an Englishwoman who married the heir to the throne of Bechuanaland (later Botswana), Seretse Khama (played by David Oyelowo).
A great print.
Looking tweedy and English.
The Man With the Iron Heart (2017)
As the wife of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich, who was assassinated in Prague during World War II. I’ve been on a WWII kick lately, so I may try to track this down!
Excellent parenting?
Another great print.
Must be the 1920s? Because that’s very robe de style-y.
Hostiles (2017)
As an 1890s settler whose family is attacked by Comanche Indians, who then hitches up with soldiers escorting a Cheyenne war chief home. A very, very, very mixed bag.
Ain’t much to look at, costume-wise.
Hence why I’m not a western fan.
And coming up…
Radioactive (2019)…
Pike will play Marie Curie in this biopic, but sadly there’s no photos yet!
What’s your favorite historical role played by Rosamund Pike?
What was it with the 2005 ‘Pride and Prejudice’? They seem to think the Bennett Girls were farm girls. Granted Mr. Bennett was farming his land but as a ‘Gentleman Farmer’ he didn’t get his hands dirty and certainly his daughters didn’t! Mrs. Bennett makes quite a point of the fact her daughters do not have to work even inside the house, forget outside.
Favourites are Wives and Daughters, A United Kingdom and Love in a Cold Climate where she plays a character that’s basically Deborah Mitford Cavendish.
I have two problems with her role in “Wives and Daughters”. Pike was too young at the time and there is a haircut that . . . what was that anyway? Isn’t it a bit wrong for a story set in the late 1820s or early 1830s?
https://www.thehairpin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/0kDI_o2xPBE6wmmgt.jpeg
Yup, I got into the haircut in my review – check the linked posts! Totally wrong for 1830s.
In Made in Dagenham she was the boss’s wife, a university graduate who was lost in unexpected domestic pointlessness. She was a great character. I loved that movie, saw in on the plane to the UK. RP is the shiz.
I really like RP. Also, I need to get around to seeing A United Kingdom—really interesting real story, and two actors I quite like.
Love Rosamund Pike! She’s been filming for 20 years and hasn’t aged one bit. (Born 1979.)
I was noticing that!
Re: Hostiles: Comanche attacks on settlers in the 1890s … um. OK. Yeah. No.
The very last effective war-marking division of the Comanches — the Quahadi, under Quanah Parker surrendered in 1875. And all was pretty much peace and quiet on that front from then on.
There were some murders of civilians by Native Americans in the 1890s – IIRC, renegade Apache in New Mexico late in that decade. But that was the last – the Indian wars were pretty much done and dusted by 1875.
I love RP, she’s wonderful and underrated in everything. And she is the one actress cast as Jane Bennet who is actually even prettier than the actress cast as Lizzie — though I still don’t understand why she was cast as the mild Fanny in Love in a Cold Climate, the story includes a cousin who is supposed to be the family beauty.