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 Die Another Day, 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 The World's End, a comedy about an epic pub crawl from Shaun of the Dead'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 Jack Reacher, 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 Wrath of the Titans, videogame adaptation Doom, utopian sci-fi Surrogates, birdwatcher comedy The Big Year - were largely clumsy affairs, with Pike little more than attractive wallpaper. Take another one, Fracture. 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.

Jack Reacher 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 Top Gun. 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."