Rosamund Pike

I didn't know where film came from when I was under 10. I just thought I'd be a stage actress. I always knew money would be tough, but that never frightened me.

I wanted to be an actress since I was really, really small. I knew I didn't want to sing, and I didn't want to do music, and words were the ways I wanted to express myself.

I can read significance into tiny, tiny things. If I'd met someone 10 years ago and not seen them again, and then I suddenly bumped into them, I'd feel that that was 'meant,' or there's a fate, you know?

I think it's one of the great enrichments of life, romance.

I used to get nervous just going to the stage door, seeing people waiting to talk to me. I was afraid of being caught out in some way or not being right.

I'm not frightened of what people will think an more. Because, you know, when you're a teenager or in your early 20s, you're always frightened of what people will think.

Especially in Britain, people want to limit you.

When you're about to get married, and then you're not, it's all a big shock. You think, 'Well, okay, so I'm never going to lead a totally conventional life now.'

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?

Perhaps misguidedly, I always admire the people who are so polished.

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.

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 work in the entertainment industry, and I like to be entertained.

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

If someone makes you feel wrong-footed, you're unlikely to find them witty.

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.

I've been on stage plenty of times, and one of the things about being a stage actress is you have a 3-month run to revisit the story nightly and play it again.

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.

Peter Chelsom and Edgar Wright are totally different directors and worlds apart, but both really accomplished directors who are certain of how they want to make a film.

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.