Rosamund Pike is back on TV screens on Monday night with an airing of her 2016 film A United Kingdom.
The 2016 movie is about a love story that threatened to destabilise the African nation of Botswana, with Pike receiving critical acclaim for her role playing a real life character.
King Seretse Khama's loving but controversial marriage to a British white woman, Ruth Williams — played by Pike in the film adaptation — put his kingdom into political and diplomatic turmoil after the Second World War.
Pike has a decorated film career, having had starring roles in the likes of Gone Girl, for which she was nominated for best actress at the Oscars in 2014, An Education and Made In Dagenham.
The Brit is currently wowing fans in the Amazon Prime original series The Wheel of Time, which is being dubbed as the streaming service’s answer to fantasy drama Game Of Thrones.
Away from the camera, Pike and her husband Robie Uniacke have a fascination with Chinese culture, so much so that she has given herself an alternative name.
Why are Rosamund Pike’s children learning Mandarin?
Rosamund Pike said her partner, the businessman and mathematician Robie Uniacke, wanted to teach their two children, Solo and Atom, a new language.
And he decided that it should be a language that even he did not know, meaning he decided to teach himself Mandarin from scratch.
The 43-year-old told the BBC’s Graham Norton Show last year about her family’s learning.
“I have been trying [to learn Mandarin],” said the Die Another Day star.
“I’ve got my kids home-schooling me because my kids speak Mandarin, and I don't.
"They grew up bilingual really because my partner thought that if he was going to have more kids — he had four already — he thought it might be exciting to talk to them in a language he didn’t already know.
“So he taught himself Chinese from the ground up.
“You could call it brilliant, or you could call it really stubborn, or you could call it a kind of desire for single parenting," she joked.
“He's basically talking to them in a language I don't understand so I thought maybe [the coronavirus] lockdown was a good opportunity for me to catch up."
In February 2021, Pike gave a Chinese new year message in Mandarin to her 830,000 Instagram followers.
Why does Rosamund Pike have a Chinese name?
Rosamund has said her family has grown to have an affinity for China since learning the language.
The Sinophile chose the Chinese name Pei Chunhua for herself because she thought the transliteration of the English characters of her name into Mandarin was long and not very feminine.
Explaining her rationale behind her new name, Pike said she chose Pei because it is a traditional Chinese last name.
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Meanwhile, she said Chun represents the idea of pure and honesty, and Hua has the same sound as the character meaning flower, with her English name Rosamund meaning rose of the world.
In 2015, when her and partner Uniacke — who is 18 years older than the London-born star — were in China to promote Gone Girl, she requested the media use Pei Chunhua when writing or speaking about her.
A United Kingdom is on BBC2 at 11.15pm on Monday October 10
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