Rosamund Pike is hooked by the Smoke

by BAZ BAMIGBOYE, Daily Mail

Last updated at 10:38 10 March 2006


Rosamund Pike politely got up from the comfort of a sumptuous sofa at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party to chat about returning to the London stage. (Just to give you a sense of how big the party's

specially-erected marquee was, there were at least three dozen such sofas, artfully scattered about the tent.)

Rosamund, who is passionately excited about treading the boards again, will star as Miss Alma, one of Tennessee Williams's great heroines in his play Summer And Smoke.

"It's a great piece about unrequited love," she told me. "Although, as with all Tennessee Williams's plays, it's not as simple as that description would allow," she added.

Rosamund had been in Los Angeles for several weeks shooting Fracture, a courtroom thriller with Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling.

For Summer And Smoke, though, she wants to immerse herself in the manners and mores of the South. "I've never been there before, but I've been invited to a wedding so I'm going to take the opportunity to visit Mississippi and ride around and try and catch a sense of the place and the people," she told me.

Rosamund was at the party with boyfriend Joe Wright, the brilliant director of Pride & Prejudice - in which Rosamund, you may recall, played Jane Bennet, with Oscar-nominated Keira

Knightley as her younger sister Elizabeth.

Producer Kim Poster has recruited Adrian Noble to direct Summer And Smoke, which is expected to begin performances at the Nottingham Playhouse in

September before transferring in October to the London West End, where it has never been performed before.

Most watched News videos