Rosamund Pike has said that she used to feel like she was being “eaten alive” at red carpet events.
The British actress, 41, said she had trained herself to create a “shell” when she attended film premieres and promotional photocalls as a young woman.
She said Pierce Brosnan had helped her overcome her fear when they starred alongside each other in the 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day.
![Pierce Brosnan and co-star Rosamund Pike](https://www.irishnews.com/resizer/v2/X2FBM3SUQVIXVJZSNUIU3CUIWU.jpg?auth=72f43fbbb499f22936803d7c5b6801873038e40875348ac2de1857b4c3a8668a&width=800&height=1202)
She told the PA news agency: “I’ve trained myself. When I was younger I found the same sort of scrutiny just unbearable.
“Now I’ve found a strategy and I can do it.
“At first you feel like you’re being eaten alive.
“Pierce Brosnan first warned me about it, because the first ever photocall I had to do was for the announcement for the 20th Bond film – 40 years of Bond.
“And I could hear this noise of people and he said ‘Just wait, around the corner they’re there ready to eat you alive’ or something – he didn’t actually say that, but that’s what I heard.
“And then we went up on the stage and I nearly fell over, it was so…
“The force of these people, the photographers, the flashbulbs.
“He just put his arm around me, and I thought: ‘God, he realises I’m about to fall over.’
“And he just had me. Because it is a shock, it feels like you are being eaten alive for a minute.
“And then you start to realise that you can put up a shell.”
The Gone Girl actress stars as Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie in Radioactive, directed by Marjane Satrapi.
She said she doubted whether Curie would approve of the glitz of a red carpet.
“She’d be very disapproving and scathing about it,” she joked.
Radioactive is available to watch on digital platforms now.