Although Rosamund Pike is now a household name after appearing in blockbusters like Gone Girl and A United Kingdom, when she was auditioning for her break out role in 2002’s James Bond Die Another Day, she was a largely unknown actor. 

But despite being on the brink of her career, Pike has revealed that she refused to be pressured into removing her clothes in her audition, when the producer asked her to wear “three pieces of string.”

Speaking during an interview for Amazon’s Audible Sessions, Pike explained that before the audition she was asked to bring a revealing dress with her, that she would have to “drop.”

But instead of picking out something typically risqué, Pike borrowed a dress worn by her mother for an opera performance, to which the costume designer “didn’t know what to say.”

Pike explains: “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 realised I was way out of my depth.”

Although it must have been intimidating as a 21 year old woman to come up against one of the biggest film franchises in Hollywood, Pike stuck to what she felt comfortable with. 

“Then on the day (of the audition), I don’t know where I got the resolve and strength of mind at 21 - but I just thought, ‘Actually, sod that,’” she continued. 

“So I put on this shimmering sheath, or whatever was the order of the day, but I didn’t drop it.”

Although this sounds to us like a pretty disgusting way to treat a very young woman entering her acting career, Pike insists that while filming “there wasn’t an ounce of feeling uncomfortable while I was on that set.”

Pike played double agent Miranda Frost in the film, alongside Pierce Brosnan as the infamous James Bond. Brosnan is 26 years her senior, and at the time of filming was 47 years old while playing her love interest.

Although it’s positive that Pike has many good things to say about her experience on that film, for example she also praises producer Barbara Broccoli for being “way ahead of all this #MeToo movement”, the trope of severely older, womanising man seeming like an appropriate sexual partner for a 21 year old woman, still hangs over us. 

As ever, we wonder if Broccoli was so ahead of #MeToo, wouldn’t giving an older woman the part, and auditioning her on her talents and not her bra size, have been a more progressive move? 

Images: Getty