London actor Rosamund Pike has disclosed that she was punched in the face and robbed of her mobile phone while walking in the capital in 2006, an experience she recounted publicly for the first time during a Magic Radio interview released on 25 May. “I was on the phone to my mother … and I was mugged,” the 46-year-old told listeners, explaining that a “kid” on a bicycle struck her cheek, snatched the handset and sped off, leaving her mother to endure “15 minutes of hell” before Pike borrowed a pub phone to call back.
Pike’s story surfaces as London grapples with a surge in mobile-phone thefts. Police records obtained by The Times show 70,137 handsets were reported stolen in 2024—more than triple the tally four years earlier and up almost 40 per cent year-on-year. The Independent reports a 151 per cent jump in such crimes, noting that 54 per cent of snatches involve pedal-bike riders.
The Metropolitan Police has intensified its response. A February operation deployed plain-clothes and uniformed officers across the West End, arresting more than 200 suspects and recovering about 1,000 devices. “We are seeing phone thefts on an industrial scale, fuelled by criminals making millions by being able to easily sell on stolen devices either here or abroad,” Commander Owain Richards said, urging technology firms to render stolen phones unusable.
City Hall backs that call. Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime Kaya Comer-Schwartz said companies “must go further and faster to make it harder for stolen phones to be sold on, repurposed and re-used illegally,” pledging continued collaboration with the Home Office and industry.
For Pike—currently promoting the thriller Hallow Road—the long-past assault remains vivid. “It was one of those moments where anger and fear collide,” she reflected, adding that the bruise she carried afterwards mattered less than her mother’s panic on the other end of the silent line.