Rosamund Pike explains how she transformed herself into LI's Marie Colvin for 'A Private War'

A newly released featurette about the film “A Private War” offers a glimpse into Rosamund Pike’s approach to playing the Long Island war correspondent Marie Colvin.

Raised in East Norwich, Colvin joined London’s Sunday Times in 1985 and covered conflicts in such places as Chechnya, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka. In 2012, she was killed in a bombing while covering the siege of the city of Homs, in Syria. After her death, Stony Brook University founded the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting with help from her family.

In the short segment, Pike discusses how she searched for bits of footage of Colvin, learned her American accent and even worked with a dance coach to imitate Colvin’s way of moving and walking.

“Marie Colvin had an extraordinary physicality,” Pike says in the featurette. “She held herself in a way that was almost like she was preparing for attack.”

The clip, produced and released by the distributor behind “A Private War,” Aviron Pictures, arrives as awards season is reaching its peak. Pike is a Golden Globe nominee for her performance; voting for Academy Award nominees begins in earnest next month, with announcement of nominees set for Jan. 22.