All great actors star in their fair share of bombs, but few beyond Rosamund Pike hold the distinction of starring in “one of the worst films ever made.”
The Gone Girl star detailed her self-described “failure to become an action star,” in a conversation on Tuesday’s episode of How to Fail With Elizabeth Day. Despite “a promising start” in the coveted “Bond girl” role in 2002’s Die Another Day, Pike’s 2005 follow-up proved a bomb so “catastrophic” she feared for her future career.
Keith Hamshere/Universal
“When I was making Pride and Prejudice, and I was having great fun in my cornfields in my bonnet, I get a call to be in an action franchise,” Pike recalled. “They’re making a cinema version, a narrative version of the video game Doom. And I think in my bonnet, in my field of hay bales, ‘Yeah, I can do anything. I can jump on this hay bale in my crinoline, so I can certainly go and kill some zombies on Mars.'”
Id Software’s popular Doom games follow an interstellar marine’s life-or-death battle against space demons to save Earth from invasion. Pike explained that the film originally starred Ray Winstone, but he was replaced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, just a few years out from his first first film role — as the Scorpion King in 2001’s The Mummy Returns — after years in the ring as a professional wrestler.
“So suddenly I’m in this film with the Rock, and I realize how utterly ill-equipped I am to be an action star,” she said, recalling the “macho guys” who dominated the production. “There were weights on the set…. Every time a gun was brought out, it was kind of like a holy relic for the Doom fans… I was just out of my comfort zone, out of my league, out of my depth.”
Pike pulled no punches when describing the finished product: “It was an absolute bomb. I mean, I probably could have ended my career. It was just probably one of the worst films ever made. I mean, it was a catastrophe,” she said. “You get the sense like you’re lucky to have survived that one.”
Indeed, Doom was panned by critics and underperformed at the box office. Directed by frequent Sidney Lumet collaborator Andrzej Bartkowiak, the film grossed $58 million worldwide, on an estimated budget of about $60 million (not counting marketing and publicity costs). And it certainly hasn’t had the staying power of Pride and Prejudice.
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Pike was all smiles during a 2005 interview with IGN to promote the film, joking that after Pride and Prejudice, “I thought Mr. Darcy, the lead character of that, was supposed to be the epitome of the ultimate man. And then you meet the Rock and you think, Ah, English guys have a little bit to learn.”
Over two decades later, she’s grateful for her Doom experience, telling Day, “It was probably after that that I started to do my research, because I didn’t know enough about video games… I just wasn’t that person.”
You can watch Pike’s full appearance on the How to Fail podcast above.
