Rosamund Pike sheds ice-queen shackles with meatier role in 'Jack Reacher'

You might think the daughter of two opera singers, who holds a degree in English from Oxford University, and once counted Chelsea Clinton as a friend might be a little, well, unapproachable. It hardly helps that in the case of Rosamund Pike, she rose to fame as the icy Miranda Frost in 2002's James Bond film , a role she played rather too well. All of a sudden she was the English rose with thorns, aloof and standoffish. Or as she explains it: "Suddenly, my personality was usurped by Miranda Frost's hostility and cool."

In fact, the 33-year-old Pike is a rather warm soul who has a way of making you feel, if only for half an hour, like an old friend. When we meet at London's Soho Hotel, Pike curled up on a cream sofa, wearing a cream blouse, spiky heeled boots and black leggings, we talk about all manner of things - the merits of iPads, the redemption of tennis player Andy Murray, boozy Saturday nights out in the suburbs, her (not entirely serious) plans for a daytime TV chat show with Pierce Brosnan, her improving American accent and the "horrendous burglary" she endured a few weeks back.

This is a particularly hectic time for Pike: she's just started shooting , a comedy about an epic pub crawl from 's Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. She's in the midst of moving house with her partner, Robie Uniacke, a businessman. They're also contending with parenthood. Pike gave birth in May to a boy they named Solo.

For all this, Pike presents a serene façade. "I'm much more chaotic than people realise," she says in her cut-glass accent. "People think I'm incredibly calm. It makes me laugh. They say things like, 'You've got this wonderful air of calm about you.' I take the compliment, because the reality is so far removed."

Her lack of work-life balance aside, the main topic of conversation is , Pike's new film that is likely to further boost her Hollywood profile. It's not her first Hollywood movie but it's certainly her best so far. Previous outings - mythological fantasy , videogame adaptation , utopian sci-fi , birdwatcher comedy - were largely clumsy affairs, with Pike little more than attractive wallpaper. Take another one, . Even she admits she was "disappointed" with her lawyer portrayal in this trite legal thriller. "I felt that somehow I'd fallen into the trap of a cliché, which I really hate doing," she says.

is a different beast. To begin with, it stars Tom Cruise as the titular lone crusader. "He is a face I've grown up with. I remember lying on my tummy [when I was young] watching . It's startling the first time when you meet someone with a famous face like that. But one of the worst things you can do on a movie set is be too awestruck. You don't serve yourself or the film well."