Rosamund Pike: 'I have James Bond to thank for my whole career'
WHAT IS more deadly for the career of a British actress: the corset drama or the Bond film? The first is as restrictive as the garment itself, confining its players to a life of simpering under parasols and sipping tea. It is a fate that befell Helena Bonham Carter before Tim Burton cast her as an ape. The second frequently signals the death knell for any serious young actress seeking credibility, as the latest Bond girl, Gemma Arterton, might discover to her cost.
Rosamund Pike had acted in both by the time she was 22. In theory then, her career could have been over before it had begun. Early television appearances saw her in the BBC's Elizabeth Gaskell adaptation Wives And Daughters in 1999, cast as the top-notch equestrian Lady Harriet, followed by a role as the impossibly nice girl Fanny in Love In A Cold Climate, based on Nancy Mitford's tale of English upper-crust life between the wars.
Then, just as those corsets were beginning to choke the life out of Pike, along came the Bond juggernaut, Die Another Day (2002), in which she starred opposite Pierce Brosnan as the Olympic fencing gold medallist Miranda Frost. "I have Bond to thank for my whole career," says Pike.
It says something about her resolve that she turned all of these potential career dead ends to her advantage. While her female Bond co-stars were no less than Madonna and Halle Berry (whose career plummeted afterwards), it was Pike that emerged from the film with her credibility intact. Aided by the fact she sizzled in one of the sauciest bedroom scenes in the franchise's history, Pike was England's latest rose, demure and detached with a cut-glass accent and an icy reputation. This was not the real Rosamund Pike, as she is quick to stress. "I can't bear it when people make assumptions about me. I think post-Bond, people forgot I'm very girly."...
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http://commanderbond...n...&item=54206 - Sunday Herald