Rosamund Pike says that she did end up enjoying herself at Oxford because, in her final year, she fell in love. ‘It was like that sentence in Brideshead, about a door finally opening and you suddenly see what it’s all about. Oxford became beautiful for me. I have wonderful memories of being there and it seemed to be endlessly summer and it was wonderful to be in love, really…’ Her boyfriend, Simon Woods, went on to become an actor, too, and after they split up was cast alongside her in the film Pride & Prejudice in 2005.

Hands, hands, hands…

“I just love Brenda (Mrs. Bennet) in this scene, just hating him. `My small rectory abuts her state´. I always think that line is really rude. I don´t know why but it just sounds rude. `A parsonage of no mean size´sounds rude as well. I think Mr. Collins has got a filthy mind. He´s all about sex, Mr. Collins, really. Or, rather, sexual frustration.”

(Joe Wright, Director)

“Really fun, ‘cause I’m an only child so, I don’t know what it’s like to have that particular rivalry you have with a sister or that particular love or whatever and with this it feels like it has come alive.”

(Rosamund Pike)

“I was trying to find out what a man of Mr. Bingley´s means and age would do with his time, whether he´d work o have a job or anything, and they really didn´t. They were for walks and played cards in the afternoon…it was a weird period when men really do anything. He wasn´t in government, he didn´t have an estate so he really just had a big fat income and wandered round with it in his pocket. Basically, his aim is to get married, and once married to buy an estate and become a proper landed gentleman”.

(Simon Woods)

“The two older sisters, they´re just perfect creatures. Then there´s the two younger girls who are giggly and silly. Then there´s Mary in the middle, who doesn´t know what she´s doing half the time.”

(Talulah Riley, Mary)

“You have no idea, you know, when you come into a picture what Keira Knightley is going to be like. And it turns out, she is as extraordinary an actor as I’ve ever met in my life. Rosamund was…it’s indescribable how ethereally beautiful she was. Talulah was…oh, I just embraced her. Carey… they were like children, you know. And Jena, she just became this silly child. They were wonderful. It was just a wonderful family, you know. Headed and embraced and supported and catalysed by Brenda Blethyn.”

(Donald Sutherland)

“Filming Pride and Prejudice was a joy and made for one of my happiest summers ever. It could well be that the story brings out the best in people and it sounds so cheesy, but we really did behave like a family. The girls playing the younger sisters had never been on a film set before and wanted to socialise all the time, so we picnicked, hung out in a beautiful country house and went swimming naked in a lake. It was idyllic.”

(Rosamund Pike)

“And these two are back together again. And LIzzie is so gracious in this scene. She doesn´t take up any emotional space, she gives it all to Jane. She knows it´s Jane´s night.
`Perhaps Mr. Collins has a cousin´, I think that´s the most endearing line of Elizabeth´s throughout the film.”

(Joe Wright, Director)

“I first saw the assembly ball scene on a little screen, and I thought that it went on too long, it seemed to go on forever! But when I saw it on a cinema, I couldn’t get enough of it. 
Audiences are so literate and read so quickly. You don’t need twenty eight shots to establish who likes who”.

“Pride & Prejudice must have been a similarly great experience for you?
Absolutely, yes. It was really happy. But that’s the thing about rehearsing. If we hadn’t rehearsed on Pride we wouldn’t have been able to capture that kind of atmosphere on film. We wouldn’t have seemed like we knew each other; we had to be a family by the time we started to film. And it really worked.”

(Rosamund Pike)