Rosamund Pike has said she used to feel as though she was being “eaten alive” at red carpet events, explaining she has now “found a strategy” to cope with the attention.
Speaking to PA news agency, the Gone Girl star recollected what it was like to appear on red carpets during the early stages of her career.
The first photocall Pike ever took part in was for her first film role in 2002 James Bond blockbuster Die Another Day, in which she played Miranda Frost.
The actor said that she was warned about what it was like to appear on red carpets by her co-star Pierce Brosnan, saying that she trained herself to create a “shell” when she attended film premieres and photocalls.
“I’ve trained myself. When I was younger I found the same sort of scrutiny just unbearable,” she said.
The 41-year-old outlined that she now has a “strategy” that she uses to manage the scrutiny.
“At first you feel like you’re being eaten alive,” she said.
“Pierce Brosnan first warned me about it, because the first ever photocall I had to do was for the announcement for the 20th Bond film – 40 years of Bond.
“And I could hear this noise of people and he said, ‘Just wait, around the corner they’re there ready to eat you alive’ or something – he didn’t actually say that, but that’s what I heard.”
Pike said that when she first stood on the stage, she “nearly fell over”.
“The force of these people, the photographers, the flashbulbs,” she said, recalling how Brosnan put his arm around her.
“And he just had me. Because it is a shock, it feels like you are being eaten alive for a minute. And then you start to realise that you can put up a shell.”
In her latest role, the Pride and Prejudice actor is playing Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie in Radioactive.
Pike expressed her doubt that Curie would have approved the bells and whistles of the red carpet.
“She’d be very disapproving and scathing about it,” the actor joked.
Pike recently discussed the joy she feels playing unruly women in an interview with The Independent.
