Rosamund Pike hits out at director over nude scenes in award-nominated film

Rosamund Pike said being asked to do nude scenes never benefits women. She described how, before a 2003 stage role in Hitchcock Blonde, the director took her to lunch and discussed the implications of her character being naked on stage. She characterized the situation as a double-edged sword: the director presented the process as proper and gentlemanly while she understood the trade-off between a “plum” role and the requirement to appear naked. She said a similar dynamic occurred before the 2018 film A Private War, where she also had to be naked, and she connected these experiences to feeling patronized at work.

"Ahead of the play, Pike says the director, Terry Johnson, took her out for lunch at a "quite smart Italian restaurant" and asked her "if I understood the implications that in this scene, she is naked". "It was such a double-edged sword," she said, "because I could see the whole thing unfolding. I knew exactly what this meeting was. This was the director, assuaging his own conscience: 'I've done it in the proper way; I've taken her out for lunch, we've discussed in very gentlemanly fashion that she will be required to be naked, but she also knows that I'm offering her an absolutely plum role.'""

""And as an actress, you know that the role is great, but in order to do the role, you have to appear naked.""

"Pike said that a similar discussion took place ahead of the 2018 film A Private War, in which she played celebrated war journalist Marie Colvin. "It happened again on a film [ A Private War] where I had to be naked," she said. "Well, I""

"Rosamund Pike has opened up about her experience being asked to do nude scenes, saying it "never benefits the woman to be naked"."

Read at The Independent