Rosamund Pike has recalled her experience working on the 2005 Doom movie, which she described as “an absolute bomb” that could have ended her career.
Pike, who played Bond girl Miranda Frost in 2002’s Die Another Day before starring alongside Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Karl Urban in the ill-fated video game adaptation, said she was “lucky to have survived” its disastrous release.
Doom follows Karl Urban’s John Grimm, a marine who is nicknamed “Reaper” by the other members of his squad. In charge is “Sarge,” played by Dwayne Johnson. As with id Software’s shooter series, the marines are stationed at a Martian research facility when everything goes to hell. Among the scientists working there is John’s estranged sister, Samantha (Rosamund Pike).
Doom often ranks alongside 1993’s Super Mario Bros. and 1994’s Street Fighter in worst video game movies ever lists. And speaking with Elizabeth Day on the How to Fail podcast, Pike listed Doom as one of her failures.
“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,” Pike said. “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.’”
“Originally it was with Ray Winstone, that project. And then the whole thing was reimagined, and he was the leader of this bunch of marines going out to this facility in Mars. And I was a scientist out there. And then, for whatever reason Ray Winstone didn’t end up doing it, and he was replaced by Dwayne Johnson, The Rock.
“So suddenly I’m in this film with The Rock, and I realize how utterly ill-equipped I am to be an action star,” Pike continued. “The first day I meet Dwayne Johnson, who couldn’t be nicer but is just a completely different beast from 24-year-old RP, who had a team of macho guys around him. There were people pepping him up. There were weights on the set. Every time a gun was brought out it was like a holy relic for the Doom fans. There was the routine before a take. It felt more like a sort of Māori, All Blacks kind of pre-game warm up, something. I was just out of my comfort zone, out of my league, out of my depth.”
Doom made just $58 million in theaters when it came out 20 years ago, with a 18% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes. “The film was an absolute bomb,” Pike continued. “It probably could have ended my career. It was probably one of the worst films ever made. I mean, it was a catastrophe. I don’t read the reviews, but you get the sense like, you’re lucky to have survived that one. But then it wasn’t career ending for The Rock, or me as it turned out.
“It was probably after that that I started to do my research. Because I didn’t know enough about video games. I wasn’t the right kind of girl to be in that. I didn’t want to be the sex symbol. So it’s okay I guess to fail at being an action star if to be an action star in those days was to be the absolute bombshell sex symbol. I just wasn’t that person.
“And so, as the girl in a film like that, if the film is a bomb, you do think, s**t, it’s because I wasn’t hot enough. It’s not the total, obviously, the failure of the film, but if loads of guys say that film is s**t, your part in it is to play your character but also look hot. And I don’t think I got that or took that seriously, or worked out for the gym body that a better female action star would have done.”
“Also, nobody helped me. Nobody said. Nowadays, I’m sure an actress cast in that would have a personal trainer. There would be a conversation about, you’re playing Lara Croft, this is how she should look.”
Luckily for Pike, not only did she survive Doom, but her career went from strength to strength. She starred in Johnny English Reborn (2011), Wrath of the Titans (2012), Jack Reacher (2012), and The World’s End (2013). A year later, Pike earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Amy Dunne in 2014 psychological thriller Gone Girl (2014).
Pike went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her role in 2020 black comedy I Care a Lot, and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress for her role in comedy miniseries State of the Union. More recently, Pike played Moiraine in the Amazon Prime fantasy series The Wheel of Time, which was canceled after Season 3.
Despite the failure of the 2005 Doom movie, the franchise saw another adaptation nine years later. Doom: Annihilation came out in 2019 as a direct-to-video release, and was met with negative reviews too.
Photo by Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
