'Radioactive': Bond girl, 'Gone Girl' to Marie Curie, Rosamund Pike's talent of toying with the unusual and bold
If you've watched 'Gone Girl', there's no way you can forget the dangerous and insidious character played by Rosamund Pike. That film had the potential to mess with your mind and leave you wondering about what's real and what's not. Pike played the dysfunctional wife — a complicated or rather 'crazy' woman, married to Ben Affleck. On the surface, they seem to be a normal couple like everyone else, till of course, one day she is seemingly dead and pins all the blame on him. But this is just the beginning of all the madness. With this scintillating performance, Pike enthralled the audience and took them with her on the rollercoaster to hell.
This wasn't the first time that Pike had challenged herself and the audience by portraying immensely tricky roles in varying genres as if determined not to be typecast and bound by invisible rules and limitations. There is a sort of unearthly unpredictability about her and she intends to keep it that way. After making herself seen by playing a Bond girl in 'Die Another Day' (2002), she took on Marie Colvin in 'A Private War' (2018) and now it's Marie Curie in 'Radioactive, the Amazon Prime biopic about the Nobel-prize winning scientist who discovered radium in the early 1900s, leading the way for women in science and fighting for her right to be recognized.
Through the glimpses of the trailer itself, Pike is the fiery Curie who does not let her personal life come in the way of her ambitions and neither does she let a man take credit for her work. Curie's life was peppered with tragedies and scandals, and at one point, her personal affairs led her to become the national conversation, resulting in much humiliation. However, going by the many letters and interviews, Curie maintained a dignified silence. It would be interesting to see how Pike will delve further into this role.
In an interview with Lamag.com, Pike confirmed that she prefers to 'jump genres' and explore the roles with multiple shades and she noted the evolution of her roles since 'Gone Girl'. "When you’re younger, people always ask about your choices. I’ve always laughed: 'My choices? I’m just taking what I’m offered.' In recent years there’s been a progression post-'Gone Girl'. That character, Amy Dunne, (ran the) whole gamut: cozy friend, fun-loving cool girl, smart and sophisticated. After that, floodgates opened. It was full permission to let out the crazy — and I’ve had a lot of fun playing antiheroines. I’ve attempted not (to) be typecast — to play with multiple shades. I’d still love to do something else with the commercial clout of 'Gone Girl' — a film with huge buzz that adults want to go to a movie theater for. But, alas, my tastes are not always commercial."
'Radioactive' releases on Amazon Prime on July 24.