British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and British actor-producer and Hollywood star Rosamund Pike attend a cultural event in Shanghai on January 31, 2026. Photo: Screenshot of RedNote video

British actor-producer and Hollywood star Rosamund Pike joined British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a cultural event in Shanghai with performing arts students at Design Innovation Institute Shanghai, where Pike talked about her Chinese name and shared her personal connection with Chinese learning. 

According to video clips shared on social media platform Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, Starmer told Pike, who speaks fluent Chinese and got a Chinese name Pei Chunhua, that she should speak mandarin (Putonghua). 

“My children do. I have always felt that Chinese is the language of the future,” Pike responded, adding that she gave herself the Chinese name 10 or 15 years ago and “proud of that Chinese people like it and they like the meaning of it.” 

Pike said that usually when a Western actor comes to China, their names are translated to Chinese by homophone, but for a name like Rosamund Pike, the name would be too long to be meaningful in Chinese. 

Pike previously shared with media the meaning of her name Pei Chun Hua. Pei sounds like Pike; Chun could mean candid and simple, unadorned; Hua represents China, and it can also mean flower, that is the meaning of English name Rosamund, according to chinanews.com.

“Sometimes I’m walking through London and somebody says Pei Chunhua, and I turn around. It’s very nice,” Pei shared the moment with the audience, talking and acting vividly, prompting laughter at the hall, video clips from RedNote show. 

Pike, whom many know as “Amy” from David Fincher’s Gone Girl (2014), has starred in works including Jack Reacher (2012) and the television series State of the Union (SundanceTV, 2019). She also starred a pivotal role in Now You See Me 3 that was screened in North America and China on November 14, 2025. 

She first used the name Pei Chunhua in 2015 when promoted in China the film Gone Girl, a thriller that earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress. She has received numerous accolades including a Primetime Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award and British Independent Film Award.  

Pike has long been known for her fluent Chinese speaking and deep understanding of and love for Chinese culture. Pike’s 12-year-old son won the global championship at the Chinese Bridge contest, a Chinese language competition, for 2024.

Also at the exchange event with students on Saturday, when asked about which part of Chinese culture he finds inspiring, Starmer said the fable of “blind guying touching elephant” is fantastic. It symbolizes the way that the rest of the world doesn’t really know or understand the whole of China, he said. 

“You got the touching of the leg and thinking that’s a trunk, or a belly and thinking that’s a wall,” Starmer said, adding that it is a really useful way to convey why things like this (cultural and people-to-people exchanges) are so important, per another RedNote video clip.

In Starmer’s China visit, direct contact with the people has become a key feature, which was described by some netizens as down-to-earth and approachable. Starmer has been seen dining at a Yunnan cuisine restaurant in Beijing with chopsticks and wandering in the lanterns-decorated traditional Yuyuan Garden in rainy Shanghai.

Global Times