Rosamund laid bare

How am I going to be spending the summer?' muses Rosamund Pike, squinting against the sunlight streaming through the window of an office in the Royal Court Theatre.

'Well, I'll be rediscovering London after a couple of summers away. I love the city at this time of year,' she continues.

'It turns languid, and gets fairly empty.' She turns to me with a wry smile. 'Apart from the theatres, I hope.' Pike needn't worry about that. Her role in Terry Johnson's Hitchcock Blonde at the Royal Court was a sellout - it has just transferred to the West End; and Pike loyally transferred with it. 'Some may see it as wilfully perverse,' she says, her tone as cool and clear as a mountain spring. 'They think I ought to be doing a megabucks movie,' she says. They've got a point. Last year, she played Bond Girl Miranda Frost in Die Another Day and could easily have jetted off to Hollywood. Instead, she took to the stage. As Blonde, a stand-in for Hitchcock's platinum leading ladies, from Kim Novak to Janet Leigh, she simulates orgasm and takes off her clothes. 'There's a part of me that likes to confront and challenge, and you can be more daring on stage than on film,' she explains. 'There's that hushed moment of violence or nudity or whatever; the audience knows there are no camera tricks. It's so exciting - the purest hit.' In truth, Pike is far from animated as she says this; she addresses a lot of her remarks to the window, giving me a chance to study her redoubtable profile. Her gaze is equally disarming; bright green eyes, porcelain skin, rosebud mouth. Her thoughts rove down various byways; often, a stray observation will collide with my next question. She's aware of this. 'It's the mark of an only child,' she laughs, 'someone who's spent probably far too long living in her head.' Along with the meandering, however, comes the only child's quiet confidence that she'll get what she wants in the end.

Pike was born 24 years ago in West London; her parents, Caroline and Julian, were itinerant opera singers, picking up jobs here and there, and Pike had a raggle-taggle, middleclass boho upbringing. 'I always wanted to act,' she says, 'and my parents taught me that creative fulfilment was more important than wealth or fame.' She went to boarding school in Bristol and then to Wadham College, Oxford, where her English degree was interrupted by her first TV costume- drama jobs (Love in a Cold Climate, Wives and Daughters). 'I didn't get Oxford at first,' she admits. 'I wasn't attuned to it at all. But when I went back after working, it suddenly all made sense. It was like I was living in Brideshead Revisited.' Now she's back in London, renting a flat in Chelsea: 'Back to my roots,' she laughs. You'll find her at the farmers' market, treating herself to partridge or stocking up on Norfolk mussels, and trawling the market stalls of Spitalfields at weekends. 'You could probably blindfold me and put me down in a London street and I'd be able to tell you if it was north, south, whatever,' she laughs. 'I'm a big potterer. I love walking the streets, poking my nose around, seeing what I can sniff out.' Her summer plans also include 'trips to Kew Gardens and Richmond Park, going to the movies - I love the blockbusters, the X-Mens and Matrixes - and probably propping up the bar of some late-night drinking den after a show. I'm virtually vampiric; I used to go for nights without sleep. I was afraid I might miss something.' And her companions on these jaunts? Does she hang with famous friends or a posse of bright young things? She screws up her exquisite nose with distaste. 'Oh yeah, it'll be Colin Farrell and Chelsea Clinton,' she deadpans (Clinton was actually an Oxford acquaintance). 'No,' she continues, 'I have a bunch of friends, but we're not a "set", though they're people I'm sure will be brilliant - actors, directors, scriptwriters, novelists, playwrights. There's this feeling that we're all on the brink of a breakthrough, which is really exciting.' (One of this non-set, it turns out via her perusal of my copy of Granta, is Adam Thirlwell, one of their Best Young British Novelists.) 'I definitely gravitate toward creative types,' she adds.

'Though, having said that, I live with a banker.' 'Really?' I mutter. But I thought you were dating an actor. 'Hang on,' she exhorts, folding her hands demurely. 'I only said I lived with this guy.' She pauses theatrically. 'In fact, I live with two men.' She notes my confusion with satisfaction.

'And that's all I'm saying on the subject. Let's leave my essential mystery intact,' she concludes delightedly. She is, in fact, dating actor Simon Woods whom she met six years ago at Oxford.

But she has no plans to marry and settle down.

For now, she's focusing on her career; the West End till autumn, 'then I'll be ready to do a movie'. She'd love to work with Baz Luhrmann or Adam Sandler, 'for starters'. But, she explains, 'whatever I do next, I'd like to find something with the qualities this play has; it's reinforced my belief that entertainment, the art of telling stories, can still affect people in all kinds of ways'.

You want to leave them shaken and stirred, I suggest. 'I would hope,' says Pike archly, 'that I've done that already.' Hitchcock Blonde is now at the Lyric Theatre (0870 890 1107)

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