Rosamund Pike says she experienced the two most intense filming days of her life while working on an underwater scene for her recent film.
The British Hollywood star, 42, stars in the dark comedy thriller I Care A Lot as a villainous woman who makes her money stealing from the elderly by deceiving judges into appointing her their legal guardian.
Appearing on The Graham Norton Show, Pike recalled filming a scene in which her character struggles to escape a car submerged in water.
The Gone Girl actress said the experience was both “exhilarating” and “quite terrifying”.
She said: “There is an amazing underwater sequence, and they teach you in a very relaxed way and you think, ‘This is great, I can do this,’ and you’ve just got comfortable with the idea when they say, ‘We are not going to do any of that. We are going to take away your mask and your oxygen, we’re going to suspend the car in water and you’re going to struggle to get out.’
“I had the two most intense filming days of my life. As you are acting the panic, your sympathetic nervous system starts to react, and you get more and more adrenalized – it was exhilarating but also quite terrifying.
“About halfway through the afternoon I was allowed to come to the surface and because we were in England, across the tank came this inflatable tray with mugs of tea and digestive biscuits. It was the most welcome sight.”
Pike recently relocated to Prague, Czech Republic with her partner Robie Uniacke and their two sons, to film the epic fantasy series The Wheel Of Time, and joined the chat show via video call.
She joked that the city felt even more distant because of Brexit.
Asked whether she was now living there, she said: “It would seem so. I’m working here so we decided instead of the constant back and forth we would all up sticks and move here.
“It seems even further away now Brexit has happened. We feel like we are in a very different country and it feels very far away suddenly.”
BBC One’s The Graham Norton Show airs on Friday at 10.45pm.