Rosamund Pike has proven herself skilled at playing sociopathic and unhinged characters over her career, such as her recent role as Marla in "I Care a Lot". The document argues that Pike deserves more opportunities to play such characters because she brings them to life in a compelling way that benefits audiences, even if it makes them feel like harming themselves. It praises her previous role as Amy Dunne in "Gone Girl" as another example of her talent for playing chaos-causing but insightful characters who will go to extreme lengths to get what they want.

1. I care a lot
This is a formal petition for Hollywood to let Rosamund Pike play more sociopaths. I’m not
saying this campaign should take precedence over other movements. The fight to stop awards
shows from trying to convince us Jared Leto can actually act, for instance, is still of paramount
importance. The crusade to launch an internet debate over “Hollywood’s Best James,” the likes
of which will one-day rival the current “Best Chris” discourse, cannot and shall not be forgotten.
And of course, the noble work of pressuring Disney to give Oscar Isaac and Pedro Pascal the
Star Wars rom-com they deserve will never truly end.
But Pike, who’s been faithfully strapping herself into corsets for Jane Austen romance dramas
and hot-ironing her hair for period pieces and donning power suits for Tom Cruise-led action
adventures for over two decades now, well … she deserves this win. She’s earned this victory.
And rewarding her relentless on-screen efforts benefits us too. After all, no one plays unhinged
quite like Rosamund Pike. She’s got a knack for bringing NSFW characters to life. Not NSFW in
the way that watching a Bridgerton episode or those Michael B. Jordan Super Bowl
commercials might be. No, it’s more that, when you’re watching Rosamund Pike go absolutely
apesh*t on screen, you too feel a strange desire to crawl out of your skin and ram a hammer
into your face. And, as entertaining as that might be to watch, you just know your high-strung
cubicle mate couldn’t handle the sight of that much blood.
I blame this renewed fervor with which I’m advocating for Pike’s murderess renaissance on her
latest on-screen downward spiral, I Care A Lot. In it, Pike plays Marla, a grifter in
monochromatic suits who smirks her way through courtroom hearings and gangster
shakedowns as she cons old bitties out of their financial stockpiles. Marla is a woman who preys
on the elderly, reveling in their misfortune of having their fortunes stolen by her, living it up with
her lesbian lover Fran and dragging the hell out of life through the mouthpiece of her beloved
vape pen. I knew when the trailer featured the actress narrating Marla’s scheme that deranged
Rosamund Pike was back. I knew, because any time Pike is voicing over her own on-screen
downward spiral, what she’s really doing is choosing violence.
She’s done it before, most notably in David Fincher’s muted thriller Gone Girl.
Now, your average cinephile might remember that movie as the first on-screen credit for Ben
Affleck’s peen — or, side-peen — but to focus solely on the shadowed genitalia of a Dunkin
Donuts mascot would be a grave mistake. No, the real chaos-causing performance in that film
comes from Pike’s Amy Dunne. Amy Dunne, who fearlessly faked her own death simply to
teach her cheating husband a lesson. Amy Dunne, who slit the throat of a grown-up Doogie
Howser mid-climax. Amy Dunne, who gave us one of the most scathing, insightful monologues
on sexism in society with her “Cool Girl” speech. Did she kill, maim, and leave scorched earth to
be watered by Affleck’s tears in her wake? Hell yes, she did, and she loved every minute of it.