Rosamund Pike Reveals Uncomfortable Request Made During James Bond Audition

It’s no secret that the James Bond franchise, especially in its earliest days, was built on a strong foundation of sexism. (Just ask Helen Mirren.) And now one former Bond Girl is speaking out about an uncomfortable moment during her audition back in the early aughts.

Today, Rosamund Pike is best known for her roles as Jane Bennet in Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice (2005) and Amy Dunne in David Fincher’s Gone Girl (2014), for which she earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination. But it’s possible Pike may have never landed those roles if it hadn’t been for her breakthrough role as traitorous MI6 agent Miranda Frost in 2002’s Die Another Day with Pierce Brosnan.

Related: Why the Most Famous Ex-Bond Girl Says James Bond Can't Be Female

In a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Pike spoke out about that early role. On the one hand, it was a life-changing event. “I’d never been to America until I went with Bond,” she told the outlet. “Doing the press tour was mind-blowing, a magic-carpet ride. That was the first time I had a bowl of berries for breakfast. Isn’t it funny: that was the thing that really made me think, ‘OK, this is different.’”

Yet while that may convey a kind of naïveté, Pike was only 21 at the time she auditioned for the role. And up until that point had only had a handful of small or one-off roles in a handful of British TV shows or miniseries. Then she hit the big-time with Bond.

Pike knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but notably wasn’t willing to compromise her principles to get the role. She told Harper’s Bazaar how, “In the Bond audition, I was asked to unzip and drop the dress I was wearing, to just stand there in underwear.”

While disrobing was part of the role itself, Pike saw no reason why she should be doing that before being hired. So she refused. “I thought, ‘Well, no, I’ll be doing that if I get the part. I won’t be doing that now.’”

“I don’t know what possessed me,” Pike said of the fortitude she seemed to surprise herself with in saying no to the people who could make or break her chances. And her instincts turned out to be right, because she was quickly hired for the part.