Meet Bond's latest babe

10 April 2012

Rosamund Pike is an elusive girl, no doubt about it. Not just physically (it proves so tricky, interviewing her during her lunch break, that we eventually rearrange the chat for later on that evening) but emotionally, too.

She considers every question lobbed in her direction extremely carefully, before lobbing it back. 'I suppose I do think about things quite a lot,' she admits. 'I'm an only child and only children are quite watchful and curious about other people. It's quite interesting suddenly being thrust into the public eye. I find it fascinating to see how people now perceive me. It's almost as if you become someone's blank canvas.'

Ms Pike would be well advised to get accustomed to celebrity. From November, with the release of the latest 007 film, Die Another Day, in which she stars as the sex-bomb Bond babe Miranda Frost, she'll become public property. You wonder how she'll cope.

Rosamund, 23, is not an obvious choice for a Bond Girl. Extremely slim with beautiful, clear green eyes, great skin and a very posh voice, her dress sense is eccentric (she's wearing a pink lace top, flowery A-line skirt and mid-calf-length boots, even though it is swelteringly hot outside), and her look is strictly English rose. She's seriously bright, too.

The entire package has made her ideal for TV costume dramas such as Wives and Daughters, Foyle's War and, most famously, Love in a Cold Climate, in which she played the unbearably sweet Fanny. But as a Bond Girl? Can Pike cut it as an exotic, unapologetic, all-bust-and-no-knickers baddie?

'Well, it's funny, actually,' she says, 'because people were asking me if I'd ever considered turn-ing the part down and I said, "Absolutely not." When I heard that I'd got the part, I was speechless. There are no appropriate gestures or words at times like that.'

If you know nothing else about Rosamund Pike's role in the next Bond film, you might just possibly know this: it involves a love scene already hailed as the sexiest Bond scene ever. So how did Pike deal with the transition from buttoned-up period drama princess to on-screen vixen?

'It didn't seem sexy at the time,' concedes Pike, 'because you have to wear this really unsexy equipment in order to preserve your modesty. It was my first-ever love scene, too, but it was no more nerve-racking than any of the other scenes I had to do because everyone was very considerate and we started off with a closed set. Pierce [Brosnan] was very gentlemanly about the whole thing and really put me at my ease.

'At one point, we were lying on a bed of furs in the middle of a passionate embrace, and they cut the scene and he looked down at me and joked: "Right, now, who is it today? Halle Berry? Sophie Marceau? Ah yes, it's Rosamund Pike!"'

Is he a good kisser? 'Well, I couldn't possibly comment on that,' she replies, primly. 'But I think Pierce probably has a James Bond kiss, and then something in reserve for his wife. Everyone was wondering how I could do a love scene with him when they said he was old enough to be my father. But he wasn't paternal towards me at all, even though I guess some of his children are the same age as me. He looks very good in the flesh, too, and he was telling me how he's sort of grown into the role of Bond and that when he looks at the first film he did, GoldenEye, he felt he looked like a whippet! But lying in bed with Pierce was the strangest thing. I suddenly thought to myself: "My God, I'm in bed with James Bond and I'm in a position that huge numbers of women around the globe would love to be in."'

Of Halle Berry, the film's leading Bond lady, Pike says that she was 'very considerate of the fact that I was quite young and inexperienced feature-film-wise. She made her character much more street and American, so I made my character much more English, which really worked. Miranda is quite an edgy, uncomfortable character and to tell you the truth, I was quite happy to shed her skin after filming because she is a bit of an unpleasant person.'

But what the boys really want to know is whether she and Halle get to have a big girl tussle during the course of the film? 'Well, maybe,' Pike smiles enigmatically.

Curiously, for someone about to become thoroughly entrenched in the Bond legend, Pike admits that she isn't a Bond aficionado and proves the point by rating Timothy Dalton as Bond, 'although he didn't really get the humour of the part. He took it as a very serious job and approached it as a serious actor.' She adds: 'I didn't grow up on the Bond films at all. We never really watched a great deal of television and we certainly didn't have a video for a long time. My parents are both singers and lived a fairly unusual life, renting farmhouses in Lincolnshire and things like that, so TV was never a big feature of my childhood.

'I was a touch overprotected in a way, and I think Bond films were probably considered too racy for me to watch, which makes it all the more ironic that I'm involved in supposedly the raciest Bond scene ever. I'm quite private about what's going on in my life, but when I told my mum I'd just been to bed with James Bond, all she said to me was: "Lucky girl."

'It's funny, but when you get a part in a Bond film, you automatically assume that you'll get to travel to a load of glamorous locations. As it turned out, I filmed everything at Pinewood. A lot of the action is set in Cuba, but they didn't allow us to film there as they felt Bond was such a huge symbol of capitalism.'

Pike read English Literature at Oxford University (making her the first Oxford-educated Bond Girl), and she shares her alma mater with actresses Emily Mortimer (Scream 3), Jodhi May (The Last of the Mohicans) - and Chelsea Clinton.

'I wouldn't call her a mate as such,' says Pike, cautiously, 'but I was lucky enough to get to know her at Oxford. She was a very bright, interesting girl and a very strong person with strong ideas. We went to see Humble Boy at the Gielgud, and then five or six of us went out for dinner afterwards and we had a nice time, but nothing outrageous happened. It wasn't like we were both falling out of storerooms together or anything. Some of my friends know her quite well and I must admit, I'd quite like to get to know her better. We were going to hook up in New York when I was in the States doing publicity for Bond, but it didn't come off. She did tell me, though, that her dad was really excited when he heard I was doing the Bond film because he's such a massive Bond fan. He's got all the videos.'

Pike admits that she always wanted to be an actress, 'although I always assumed I'd work in the theatre rather than be a Bond Girl.' Most of her childhood was spent in West London. Her parents, Caroline and Julian, were both opera singers, 'who travelled a lot to wherever the work was'.

Well brought up and well educated, it comes as something of a surprise when Pike declares: 'We sometimes had no money at all. I remember times of anxiety, ups and downs, and times of unexpected windfalls when one of my parents landed a good job. But my parents loved what they did and because their work was also their hobby, it taught me that work could be fulfilling and make you happy. I remember lots of good home cooking and home dressmaking, but nothing was ever secure and I don't think it ever will be for them. That's why I can appreciate what is happening to me now as a sheer fantasy, because I know this doesn't happen very often. But my upbringing made me strong, and made me realise that the life of a performer is always going to be difficult and unpredictable.

'My dad took a job in Tuscany once, even though he didn't get paid for it, because he thought it would be fun, and I stayed with him for three months during that summer. It was an amazing experience and instilled in me a sense of beauty that I might not have had otherwise. And I was never looked after by nannies - I always had one of my parents there looking after me.'

An only child, Pike recalls 'longing for company and always being fascinated by people. I suppose my parents didn't have any more children for practical reasons - because they were travelling so much - and I do remember being very sociable whenever I met new people. But being an only child meant that I never had to compete for attention, and I know I am perceived as being very self-confident, so maybe that's where my confidence came from.'

Pike went to boarding school in Bristol - 'which was very exciting, as I was suddenly surrounded by people my own age' - and then on to Wadham College, Oxford. While there, she was offered the part of Lady Harriet in the BBC's adaptation of Wives and Daughters, and then the part of Fanny in Love in a Cold Climate.

'I did actually think about dropping out of Oxford for a while because I knew I didn't want to be an academic, but when I went back after filming, I realised what a great opportunity I would have been missing. Oxford is a wonderful place once you find out all its secrets.'

At Oxford, Pike met her actor boyfriend Simon, 'after he saw me performing in a show'. They have been together for 'a good few years,' although, according to Pike, there are no plans as yet for them to settle down and marry. 'I wouldn't even live with him, because I think I'm quite old-fashioned in that way. I'm quite happy to see where life takes me.'

Life looks like it will be taking Pike far. She already has an agent in America, as well as in London and is set to appear in 'a very edgy, very unglossy film, very unlike Bond' later this year.

Her future looks very bright indeed, and if Hollywood's appetite for dewy English roses persists, we'll be seeing a lot more of this quiet, determined beauty.

The new James Bond film, Die Another Day, is out on 20 November.

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Eva Green

Meet Bond's latest babe

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