Since Bond, she has moved seamlessly between stage and film: Hitchcock Blonde at the Royal Court Theatre; a touring Hedda Gabler that garnered rave reviews; The Libertine with Johnny Depp, Fracture with Anthony Hopkins. Whenever she’s filming, Rosamund hires a car and drives into the countryside to find a lake in which to skinny dip – whatever the weather. When she’s not on set, she lives alone in a ‘very sweet but tiny’ mews house near West London’s Kensington Gardens. ‘I like beautiful objects and I’m always window shopping on Liberty’s furniture floor, but I seldom buy anything.’
Pride of place in the house currently goes to a life-size bust of herself, painted green, which was created when she was fitted with prosthetics for her soon-to-be-released Dustin Hoffman comedy, Barney’s Version, in which she had to age 30 years. ‘It was really scary having this rubbery mask applied to my whole face, with just two straws up my nostrils to breathe through. They put a layer of plaster on top that sets and you feel as if you’re being buried alive,’ she says with a shudder.
‘My heart was pounding and I was trying to stay calm, but it was a real ordeal.’ If the trailer is anything to go by, the film is very funny. To everyone’s surprise – except her own – she has a gift for comedy, as attested by her role as Helen, Carey Mulligan’s dim friend in An Education, given to such priceless comments as: ‘Someone told me that in 50 years, no one will speak Latin. Not even Latin people.’
More comic turns are in the offing, as Rosamund has just finished filming The Big Year alongside box-office heavyweights Owen Wilson, Steve Martin and Jack Black. But being funny is a serious business: ‘Owen and I were admitting to each other that actors have a tendency to cannibalise their own emotions; you might be sobbing your heart out about some disaster and then your actor’s brain kicks in and you start scrutinising the strange honking, bellowing noise that you’re making and wondering how you could reproduce it.’ By her own admission, she cries and laughs a great deal, and in person she is quirky and self-deprecating – the very antithesis of the untouchable aloofness that she exudes in photographs.
‘I’m one of those contradictory people who can be the life and soul of the party or quite happy on my own. I like oddities – in friends, relationships and activities,’ she says serenely. She was engaged for several months to Atonement director Joe Wright, 38, who directed her in Pride and Prejudice. She was well within sight of her big day – the dress had been fitted, the cake and flowers ordered – when Wright apparently broke it off after she sent out ironic wedding invitations, featuring them in a hot tub, without consulting him.
She was reportedly mortified by this end to their three-year relationship, but won’t discuss it, although it would possibly qualify as one of those scrapes she gets into. That was in 2008; these days she says that she’s ‘as single as I want to be and as together as I want to be’, with someone she mysteriously alludes to as a ‘fellow adventurer’.
‘Being single has propelled me into some amazing adventures,’ she muses. ‘After what happened, I have nothing to lose any more; I’m not scared of being heartbroken, because love is always going to take you somewhere new and frightening and wonderful. When you spend time in a couple, that starts to define you and, while it was fun, I’ve discovered that it’s also fun being me. I might meet someone tomorrow or in two years and that’s fine. Meanwhile, I get to live out the most glorious love affairs on screen. How fabulous is that?’
Our conversation over, she tells me she’s off to buy sequins for a party the next evening. The waiter approaches and asks how she enjoyed lunch: Rosamund responds that the sweetbreads weren’t quite to her taste but that she’s so glad she ordered them because now she has eaten offal. And then she smiles – and lights up the entire room.
Vogue Germany January/February 2025 : Emma Corrin by Samuel Bradley (11 Viewers)
