Rosamund Pike Once Felt No One Respected Her After Doing the James Bond Film ‘Die Another Day’
When actor Rosamund Pike was just starting out, she earned her breakthrough role in the James Bond movie Die Another Day.
And although the film increased her popularity, she felt she received little to no respect because of it.
Rosamund Pike felt pressured to live up to the image of a Bond girl
In 2002, Rosamund Pike joined the ranks of a long list of Bond girls by starring in Die Another Day. But when Pike first got the role, the I Care a Lot star admitted wasn’t sure what she was getting into.
“I was the most naïve candidate at the time that I did [Die Another Day],” Pike said in a 2014 interview with Yahoo. “I had no agenda. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just went in and saw a character. That’s all I saw was a character, and I played that character in the audition. I never got an idea of what a Bond girl should be, because I don’t think there is such a thing.”
Soon the Radioactive star felt an enormous pressure to maintain her image as a Bond girl. But this made her feel as though she couldn’t be her real self in the public eye anymore.
“I was really confused,” Pike once told The Guardian. “Because I thought people have given me this part as a Bond Girl, and if I turn up as the real me everyone’s going to be crushingly disappointed because I don’t look anything like her. So I focused on the need to look like her, and to live up to this image that had been foisted on me.”
Rosamund Pike felt no one respected her after doing ‘Die Another Day’
It took some time for Pike to shake the Bond girl image off of her. Although she acknowledged that the title did wonders for her career, it was a blessing and a curse. She likened her Bond character Miranda Frost to a very good friend who had a bad influence on her.
“You hang out with them, and you’re the weaker vessel – it’s the ultimate peer pressure. Hanging out with a character as strong as a Bond girl, it’s like the mother would look on in horror as her daughter got led astray by this rather unpleasant older girl who took her under her wing,” she once said according to The Scotsman.
It didn’t help that others began to equate Pike more and more with her Bond character. This led to a few misconceptions about her.
“I think, post-Bond, people forgot that I’m very girly,” she added. “People compartmentalize you much more than I like to think they do.”
After her role as a Bond girl, the Wheel of Time star added a variety of movies to her film resume. This helped distance her from the Bond girl image. Pike needed the distance since she considered leaving certain aspects of Hollywood because of said image.
“Having done the Bond film and been really overexposed, I was known by everybody but respected by none,” she once said in an interview with the LA Times “I thought I wouldn’t do any interviews — bow out of the whole system — until I had something to talk about that I was actually proud of. Now I feel I’ve got my wits about me.”
Rosamund Pike felt the fame that came with being a Bond girl wasn’t really her
Pike confided that she wasn’t the type of actor to embrace being in the spotlight. After she had another career-defining role in Gone Girl, for instance, Pike chose to have a child instead of capitalizing on her newfound momentum. With her first breakthrough role as a Bond girl, she had a similar response to her fame.
“Unfortunately, it’s not what you should say if you want a big career. But I remember being on the bus going over a bridge in London, down towards Clapham. And thinking after all the kind of flying around, first-class on the kind of Bond magic carpet, I was on this bus and I thought, ‘No, this is who I am,'” Pike said on Collider Extras. “And it was such a kind of key feeling.”
Although she enjoyed all the perks of being in a Bond film, that kind of stardom just wasn’t for her.
“I just had this incredible experience with Bond. I mean, it’s like you literally jump on a magic carpet, and you’re all over the world. And it’s hotels, and the premieres. And the sort of massive thing that is Bond. It’s exhilarating. But I knew it wasn’t really me,” she said.
