Rosamund Pike

There are lots and lots of good actors out there, and often it's just luck if what you bring to the table syncs with the director's vision.

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.

I never thought I'd make any money at all doing this business. Film was never even on the cards.

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

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 grew up without any security - I obviously had lots of security because I have two parents who had a good marriage and stayed together, and we had a creative household full of ideas, but there was never any financial security. So I knew I could have a good life without that.

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.

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 when you are an only child, parents are more protective and fearful because they've only got one of you. I was not allowed to do a lot of things that, if I'd been, say, number three, I would have.

Some women can feel under-qualified due to a general lack of confidence whereas, in fact, they are uniquely qualified.

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.

Nothing can teach you what it's like to work on a film set, and the best education there can be for an actor is to walk up the street and observe human nature.