"I hear the phrase English Rose a lot,” sighs Rosamund Pike, as she wilts into her chair, sylph-like, doing little to dispel the notion.
It’s true. Her career thus far is very English Rose indeed. Most recently, she frolicked about as the least excited Bennett sister in Pride And Prejudice. But she’s almost always in period costume of some sort, playing Fanny Mitford in Love In A Cold Climate and Rochester’s long-suffering wife in The Libertine. Indeed, had she not done Bond girl duties for Die Another Day, we’d probably have never seen her in a short skirt. Or, in the event, one hitched up over her shoulders.
Doom, however, inspired by the now ancient video game, marks a radical departure. Starring The Rock, the thinking man’s Vin Diesel, as the leader of a Marines troop sent to do battle with hideous Giger monster rip-offs, Doom’s dialogue never gets beyond “Look! Over there! Where? There! Run! Aargh!” Indeed, it’s such a faithful adaptation of the source, it’s much like watching someone else playing for an hour and a half while not getting your turn.
“I was standing in a cornfield wearing a bonnet and a corset when I got the call telling me I was going to be in Doom,” explains Rosamund. “I had never seen the game or played it. We didn’t keep a television growing up so I never had the chance. But I did have a ball.”
The only child of classical musicians, one can hardly feign surprise at her lack of Doom experience. She seems to be the very definition of a well brought up young lady. She plays cello and piano and attended Oxford, where she befriended Chelsea Clinton. She generally inclines toward theatre above the less respectable media of television and film. She’s also intensely private, though she will admit that she’s currently courting Joe Wright, the director of Pride And Prejudice.
She still seems far too fragile to tumble about with The Rock, and alas, surrounded by burly men in an all-testosterone production, Rosamund was given little opportunity to master the Very Big Guns on set. She did, however, take pleasure in being covered with monster goo throughout.
“My character is a scientist performing alien autopsies,” she chirps excitedly. “So I took time to go to Prague to study the business. Once you start cutting cadavers, you just can’t stop. It was really fascinating.”
Hmmm. Not such an English Rose after all.