The early years of Rosamund Pike’s career included a moment she now openly admits could have gone very wrong. The actress recently reflected on her role in the 2005 video game adaptation Doom, revealing that the poorly received film nearly ended her time in Hollywood before it properly began.
Pike Reflects on a Career Scare
“When I was making ‘Pride & Prejudice’ and I was having great fun in my cornfields in my bonnet, I get a call to be in an action franchise. They were 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,'” she said about her experience in ‘Doom.’
While she had confidence in taking on a role in Doom, things changed when she began filming. “So suddenly I’m in this film with The Rock, and I realize how utterly ill-equipped I am to be an action star. 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.”
Working alongside Dwayne Johnson and Karl Urban, Pike suddenly found herself surrounded by a team that was working on a series of action-heavy routines. Pike even remembered Johnson doing a powerful pre-take warm-up routine reminiscent of the Haka dance performed by the Maori All Blacks. This made the then 24-year-old actress feel like a fish out of water.
The movie was released in 2005 and was a box office flop that failed to win over both critics and audiences. The movie went on to rake in a total of approximately $58.7 million against a budget of between $60 million and $70 million.
The movie may have failed, but the cast went on to achieve great things. Pike went on to achieve worldwide fame for her work on The Wheel of Time; Johnson became one of the most recognizable action heroes; and Urban became the leading man in the hit series The Boys.
In a rather interesting turn of events, Karl Urban has gone on record in a series of interviews, defending the movie as a “guilty pleasure.”
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