Before earning an Oscar nomination for Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike says she endured a less than comfortable experience while trying to break into Hollywood.
“My first audition was for a Bond film and I remember them saying I was to drop my dress and appear in my underwear,” Pike, 39, recently recalled to Amazon’s Audible Sessions, as reported by The Independent.
The actress, who was 21 at the time, would go on the win the role of Miranda Frost in the 2002 James Bond movie Die Another Day. During her audition, however, she said she didn’t do what was asked of her.
“On the day, I don’t know how I got the resolve and strength of mind, but I just thought if they’re gonna see me in my underwear, they better give me the job. So, I thought, ‘There’s no way I’m going to take off a dress in the audition for this tape to be sent around Los Angeles and to be judged on that.'”
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Pike told the podcast that she arrived at the audition in a dress her grandmother gave her. Instead, a costume designer on the film suggested she wear something else to bag the part.
“He said, ‘That’s a very beautiful dress, but in Bond films we wear things a little more like this,’ and he held up three pieces of string and I realized I was way out of my depth,” she recalled.
“So, I put on this shimmering sheath, or whatever the order of the day was, but I didn’t drop it.”
Despite her reservations while trying out for the film, Pike said “there wasn’t an ounce of feeling uncomfortable while I was on that set.”
“I look back over my experience on the Bond film and think, my goodness Barbara Broccoli was way ahead of all this #MeToo movement,” she said.