If American Audiences …
… think about her at all, the chances are pretty good that they remember British actress Rosamund Pike from her turn as the comely fencer Miranda Frost in the 2002 James Bond vehicle “Die Another Day.”

Pike’s appearance opposite Pierce Brosnan’s suave super-spy turned her into a very English sort of pin-up, a very crisp beauty suggesting sunny spring days with just a hint of snap in the air.

But as The Guardian’s Laura Barton writes, Pike has recently reinvented herself as a top-shelf comedic actress. It’s a transformation that finds full flowering in the new Rowan Atkinsion film “Johnny English Reborn.”

There is no small irony, of course, that the Atkinson comedy features Mr. Bean his ownself as a spectacularly inept secret agent. But no matter.

As ever, here’s the nut graf:

“The transformation of Rosamund Pike, in fact, began two years ago, with her role as the beautiful-but-dim Helen in An Education. It was a supporting role, yet it revealed her as a consummate comic actor. “My agents were actually quite surprised that I wanted to do it, because it just seemed to them, on paper, a kind of small part. And I thought, no, this girl could be really funny, and I was proved right in the end, I think.”

In fact, that performance led to the Johnny English Reborn part. “I was at the British independent film awards and someone from Working Title came up and said, ‘Rowan Atkinson really loved you in An Education’,” she recalls. “I was very surprised by that – I was amazed that Rowan Atkinson even knew who I was.” The role also suited Pike’s new-found desire to challenge people’s perceptions. “I’m kind of desperately looking for those things that will … you know, sort of show my wilder side, in a way, my much more irreverent, badly behaved side.'”

“Johnny English, Reborn,” starring Rowan Atkinson, Gillian Anderson and Rosamund Pike opens in the U.S. on Oct. 21.