“I just didn’t like it”: why Rosamund Pike disowned her role as a ‘Bond girl’ in ‘Die Another Day’
An unfortunate byproduct of the franchise’s earlier days, being cast as a female love interest in a James Bond movie once had the potential to make or break an entire career in the space of a single picture.
Many of them were presented as little more than eye candy and the latest notch on 007’s bedpost, and as much as landing a major role in a huge production can work wonders for any newcomer’s profile and visibility, it regularly caused difficulties when the actors tried to break out of the box that Bond had put them in.
Of course, not every ‘Bond girl’ of the Sean Connery, George Lazenby, and Roger Moore eras was typecast as a damsel in distress, conquest, femme fatale, or vapid trophy for either the globetrotting agent or his current nemesis to wear on their arm, but it happened enough times that many of them voiced their regrets.
Certain stars have worn the ‘Bond girl’ badge with honour, while others admitted they may not have been quite as quick to sign on the dotted line knowing how their professional lives panned out afterwards. One of them even decided to start pretending she was never even in one of the films, with the lingering—and unwanted—attention causing more trouble than it was worth.
As far as feature debuts go, playing a ‘Bond girl’ opposite Pierce Brosnan in his swansong was a high-profile way to go about it, with Rosamund Pike only 23 when Die Another Day was released. The leading man turned 50 less than six months after she was released, another queasy aspect of the 007 legacy that’s mercifully being phased out.
Even though she’s gone on to enjoy great success as the Academy Award-nominated star of David Fincher’s Gone Girl, the Bafta-nominated matriarch of Saltburn, the Golden Globe-winning lead of I Care a Lot, and the Primetime Emmy-winning star of State of the Union, Pike admitted the Bond baggage continued to follow her everywhere she went.
“It can be quite annoying,” she confessed, per Digital Spy. “I was on the Tube in London recently, and some teenage boys were pointing and staring and asking if I was the girl in the Bond movies. I denied it. I just didn’t like it.” Nobody wants to be accosted on public transport, and the easiest way for Pike to try and distance herself from the unruly youths was to deny that she was the person they were thinking of.
It’s been more than 20 years since Die Another Day, and Pike has continued to notch credits covering virtually every genre under the sun, but embodying the ‘Bond girl’ archetype in her first-ever movie role means that the chances of ever being able to distance herself from it completely remain slim.
