ROSAMUND PIKE

Acting is about communicating what it is like to be human: the pain, the laughs, the misery, the joy. I suppose I am searching to have it all.

I remember times of anxiety, ups and downs, and times of unexpected windfalls. But my parents loved what they did. And because their work was also their hobby, it taught me that work could be fulfilling.

Looking back, I just think I was a really average sort of girl.

What I find sexy is when someone's having fun and able to look right back at you.

You get those couples who are very fearful of bringing children into the mix because they feel like somehow that link between them as a couple is going to somehow dissolve or become less powerful or whatever. And that somehow the child is going to disrupt their happy stage.

I think you tend to try, during the time you've got off, to forget about the film. It was such a total world. I mean, the sets were claustrophobic, and as soon as you were on there, you were right back into it.

I'm kind of desperately looking for those things that will... you know, sort of show my wilder side, in a way, my much more irreverent, badly behaved side.

In the original computer game of Doom, you not only have to kill things. You have to pulverise them.

Especially in Britain, people want to limit you.

I find I clash sometimes with people who like to plan things and book you in for lunch. I'd rather someone call me up, say: 'Are you free tonight and d'you wanna go to the roller-disco? Or play pool?'

I've got friends who are pyrotechnics who do big fire shows, so I'm really fascinated by that.

The job of an actor is the same in all of them, really. I mean, you're just creating a character that you hope people will believe, so it doesn't make that much of a difference really.

There are certainly contemporaries that I admire, like Emily Blunt. I think she is amazing.

One goes on with the blithe belief that who you really are is transparent to everybody. Then you realise, with some horror, that in fact it's not. So all you can do is keep muddying the waters a bit.

I'd really love to live in New York for awhile. That's what I'm hoping to do.

I look my best when I'm totally free, on holiday, walking on the beach.

I think I'll be flavor of the month when I'm in my fifties.

I would love to play the lead in a big romantic comedy. That's definitely a dream of mine.

It's something that I am going over in my head about the whole video game thing, and whether you support violence by being in a film like this. I mean, to me, it's incredibly unreal and it's all about the action, and just explosions.

It was in New York, and I've always wanted to film in New York. And the writer was a teenage friend of mine. We did youth theatre together when we were 16 and always had a dream of making a film together. And ten years later, we've done it. So it's great.

Sometimes it irks when people come up in the street and say, 'Oh I'm a huge James Bond fan' - when you obviously want them to be a fan of your work in particular.

When the eyes are on you for the first time, you can't believe that people aren't criticising you.

As a woman, you feel that you shouldn't want to better yourself against others. Ambition has become such an ugly word, hasn't it?

I do know that the key to anything good is feeling relaxed and free. That's the main thing that you can offer yourself as an actor.

I think I was lucky in that I wasn't one of those girls who are told they are pretty the whole time. I never got that. Nor did I ever obsess about my looks as a teenager.