Rosamund Pike talks extensively about her path to becoming a Bond girl

30-Aug-2002 • Die Another Day

This Is London have published an extensive interview with Rosamund Pike. She talks about her childhood, her path to becoming a Bond girl and her role as Miranda Frost - the latest Bond babe.

Rosamund Pike is an elusive girl, no doubt about it. Not just physically (it proves so tricky, interviewing her during her lunch break, that we eventually rearrange the chat for later on that evening) but emotionally, too.

She considers every question lobbed in her direction extremely carefully, before lobbing it back. `I suppose I do think about things quite a lot,` she admits. `I`m an only child and only children are quite watchful and curious about other people. It`s quite interesting suddenly being thrust into the public eye. I find it fascinating to see how people now perceive me. It`s almost as if you become someone`s blank canvas.`

Ms Pike would be well advised to get accustomed to celebrity. From November, with the release of the latest 007 film, Die Another Day, in which she stars as the sex-bomb Bond babe Miranda Frost, she`ll become public property. You wonder how she`ll cope.

Rosamund, 23, is not an obvious choice for a Bond Girl. Extremely slim with beautiful, clear green eyes, great skin and a very posh voice, her dress sense is eccentric (she`s wearing a pink lace top, flowery A-line skirt and mid-calf-length boots, even though it is swelteringly hot outside), and her look is strictly English rose. She`s seriously bright, too.
Can Pike cut it as an exotic, unapologetic, all-bust-and-no-knickers baddie? `Well, it`s funny, actually,` she says, `because people were asking me if I`d ever considered turn-ing the part down and I said, "Absolutely not." When I heard that I`d got the part, I was speechless. There are no appropriate gestures or words at times like that.`
If you know nothing else about Rosamund Pike`s role in the next Bond film, you might just possibly know this: it involves a love scene already hailed as the sexiest Bond scene ever. So how did Pike deal with the transition from buttoned-up period drama princess to on-screen vixen?

`It didn`t seem sexy at the time,` concedes Pike, `because you have to wear this really unsexy equipment in order to preserve your modesty. It was my first-ever love scene, too, but it was no more nerve-racking than any of the other scenes I had to do because everyone was very considerate and we started off with a closed set. Pierce [Brosnan] was very gentlemanly about the whole thing and really put me at my ease.
`At one point, we were lying on a bed of furs in the middle of a passionate embrace, and they cut the scene and he looked down at me and joked: "Right, now, who is it today? Halle Berry? Sophie Marceau? Ah yes, it`s Rosamund Pike!"`

Is he a good kisser? `Well, I couldn`t possibly comment on that,` she replies, primly. `But I think Pierce probably has a James Bond kiss, and then something in reserve for his wife. Everyone was wondering how I could do a love scene with him when they said he was old enough to be my father. But he wasn`t paternal towards me at all, even though I guess some of his children are the same age as me. He looks very good in the flesh, too, and he was telling me how he`s sort of grown into the role of Bond and that when he looks at the first film he did, GoldenEye, he felt he looked like a whippet! But lying in bed with Pierce was the strangest thing. I suddenly thought to myself: "My God, I`m in bed with James Bond and I`m in a position that huge numbers of women around the globe would love to be in."`

Of Halle Berry, the film`s leading Bond lady, Pike says that she was `very considerate of the fact that I was quite young and inexperienced feature-film-wise. She made her character much more street and American, so I made my character much more English, which really worked. Miranda is quite an edgy, uncomfortable character and to tell you the truth, I was quite happy to shed her skin after filming because she is a bit of an unpleasant person.`

But what the boys really want to know is whether she and Halle get to have a big girl tussle during the course of the film? `Well, maybe,` Pike smiles enigmatically.
`It`s funny, but when you get a part in a Bond film, you automatically assume that you`ll get to travel to a load of glamorous locations. As it turned out, I filmed everything at Pinewood. A lot of the action is set in Cuba, but they didn`t allow us to film there as they felt Bond was such a huge symbol of capitalism.`

Click here for the full interview.

Click here for a full Rosamund Pike biography, character profile, photographs and wallpapers on the main MI6 site.