Vintage card in the Bond Girls series. Ursula Andress in Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962).
Stunning Swiss sex symbol, starlet, and jet-setter Ursula Andress (1936) will always be remembered as the first and quintessential Bond girl. In Dr No (1962), she made film history when she spectacularly rose out of the Caribbean Sea in a white bikini. Though she won a Golden Globe Ursula's looks generally outweighed her acting talent and she never took her film career very seriously.
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls Series. Daniela Bianchi in From Russia With Love (Terence Young, 1963).
Beautiful Daniela Bianchi (1942) is an Italian actress, whose best-known part was the luscious Soviet cipher clerk Tatiana Romanova in the James Bond film From Russia with Love (1963). She played in several more Eurospy films during the 1960s.
Vintage card in the Bond Girls series. Honor Blackman in Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964).
British actress Honor Blackman (1925-2020) was best known for playing the Bond girl Pussy Galore opposite Sean Connery in Goldfinger (1964). Blackman became a household name in the 1960s as Cathy Gale in the TV series The Avengers in which she showed an extraordinary combination of beauty, brains and physical prowess. Her career spanned eight decades.
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls Series. Claudine Auger in Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965).
French actress Claudine Auger (1941-2019) was best known as Bond Girl Domino in the James Bond film Thunderball (1965). At 17, she was Miss France 1958 and she became the first runner-up in the Miss World contest. Later she worked mostly in France and Italy.
Vintage card in the Bond Girls series. Akiko Wakabayashi in You Only Live Twice (Lewis Gilbert, 1967).
Akiko Wakabayashi (1939) is a retired Japanese actress. She is best known for her role as Bond girl Aki in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967) with Sean Connery.
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls Series. Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Peter R. Hunt, 1969).
English actress Diana Rigg (1938-2020) was well-known as Emma Peel in the classic TV series The Avengers (1965-1968) and as Lady Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones (2013-2017). In between she had an extensive career in film and theatre. Between 1959 and 1964, she performed for the Royal Shakespeare Company and won several awards, including a Tony and an Emmy award. In the cinema, she made her mark as Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, the only Bond girl to ever get 007 to the altar, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls Series. Jill St. John in Diamonds Are Forever (Guy Hamilton, 1971).
Voluptuous, red-haired American actress Jill St. John (1940) played countless bikini sexpot roles in Hollywood films of the 1960s. She was at her best as the tantalizing Bond girl Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
Bond Girls Are Forever
Nearly all of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and short stories include one or more female characters who can be said to qualify as Bond girls. Fleming's Bond girls have some individual traits but they also have much in common. The typical Bond girl is in her early to mid-twenties, roughly ten years younger than Bond, who seems to be perennially in his mid-thirties. Bond girls possess splendid figures and tend to dress in a slightly masculine, assertive fashion, wearing little jewellery and square-toed leather shoes. They generally use little or no makeup and no nail polish, and also wear their nails short. Their hair may be any colour, though they typically wear it in a natural or casual cut that falls heavily to their shoulders. Their features, especially their eyes and mouths, are often widely spaced. The first description of a Bond girl, 'Casino Royale''s Vesper Lynd, is almost a template for the typical dress as well as the general appearance of later Bond girls; she sports nearly all of the features discussed above.
Another characteristic of Bond girls is their pattern of sexually suggestive names, such as Pussy Galore. Names with less obvious meanings are sometimes explained in the novels. While Solitaire's real name is Simone Latrelle, she is known as Solitaire because she excludes men from her life. Tiffany Case received her name from her father, who was so angry that she was not a boy that he gave her mother a thousand dollars and a compact from Tiffany's and then walked out on her. Fleming's penchant for double-entendre names began with the first Bond novel 'Casino Royale'. The name of the Bond girl in that novel, 'Vesper Lynd', was intended to be a pun on 'West Berlin', signifying Vesper's divided loyalties as a double agent under Soviet control. Several Bond girls, however, have normal names.
Most Bond girls are sexually experienced by the time they meet Bond. Quite often those previous experiences have not been positive, and many Bond girls have had sexual violence inflicted on them in the past, causing them to feel alienated from all men — until Bond comes along. Tiffany Case was gang-raped as a teenager. Honey Ryder was beaten and raped as a teenager by a drunken acquaintance. Pussy Galore was sexually abused at age 12 by her uncle. Kissy Suzuki reports to Bond that during her brief career in Hollywood when she was 17, "They thought that because I am Japanese I am some sort of an animal and that my body is for everyone." The implication is often that these violent episodes have turned these Bond girls against men, though upon encountering Bond they overcome their earlier antipathy and sleep with him not only willingly but eagerly. This trope reaches an extreme level in 'Goldfinger', where Pussy Galore is portrayed as a lesbian when she first meets Bond, but at the end of the novel she sleeps with him. When, in bed, he says to her, "They told me you only liked women," she replies, "I never met a man before."
In Fleming's novels, many Bond girls have some sort of independent job or career, often one that was considered inappropriate for women in the 1950s. Vesper Lynd, Tatiana Romanova, Mary Ann Russell, and Mary Goodnight are in intelligence or law-enforcement work. Those who are criminals, such as Case and Galore, tend to be similarly independent-minded in how they approach their work — the latter even running her own syndicate. Even those Bond girls who have more conventional or glamorous jobs show themselves to be invested in having an independent outlook on life. While the Bond girls are clearly intended as sex objects, they are nevertheless portrayed in the novels as having a high degree of independence. This is also frequently (but not always) the case in the films. In 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', Bond enters into a relationship and an eventual marriage with Teresa 'Tracy' di Vicenzo.
Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder in Dr No (Terence Young, 1962) is widely regarded as the first Bond girl, although she was preceded by both Eunice Gayson as Sylvia Trench and Zena Marshall as Miss Taro in the same film. In Dr No, Sylvia Trench was also introduced as Bond girl. The idea was that James Bond would meet her in each film and marry her in the sixth and final film. This idea was abandoned after the second film. The third Bond film, Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964), established the Bond girl as regularly appearing in Bond films. There is no set rule on what kind of person a Bond girl will be or what role she will play. She may be an ally or an enemy of Bond, pivotal to the mission or simply there for her looks. There are female characters such as Judi Dench's M, who are not romantic interests of Bond, and hence may not be considered Bond girls. It is never explained why Bond's love interest in one film is gone by the next and is never mentioned or even alluded to again. This is not always the case in the novels, which do sometimes make references to the Bond girls who have appeared in previous books. For example, Tiffany Case and Honey Ryder are revealed to have married other men. In 2002, former Bond girl Maryam d'Abo co-wrote the book 'Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond'. This book later became a DVD-exclusive documentary featuring d'Abo and other Bond girls, including Ursula Andress. In 2015, Monica Bellucci in Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015) became the oldest Bond girl at the age of 50. She stated that she does not consider herself to be a 'Bond girl', but a 'Bond woman'.
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls Series. Jane Seymour in Live and Let Die (Guy Hamilton, 1973).
British-American actress Jane Seymour (1951) is known as Dr Michaela Quinn in the long-running TV series Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-1998). She also was Bond Girl Solitaire in Live and Let Die (1973) and became 'the Queen of the Miniseries' in the 1980s and 1990s.
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls series. Britt Ekland in The Man With the Golden Gun (Guy Hamilton, 1974).
Swedish actress Britt Ekland (1942) became famous through her marriage to Peter Sellers and her relationship with singer Rod Stewart. She was also known for her roles in such films as The Night They Raided Minsky's Get Carter, and The Man with the Golden Gun.
Vintage card in the Bond Girls series. Barbara Bach in The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977).
Barbara Bach (1947) is an American actress and former top model. She is best known as Bond girl Anya Amasova in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), in which she played opposite Roger Moore. She is also known as the wife of ex-Beatle Ringo Starr. Bach has 28 films to her credit.
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls series. Lois Chiles in Moonraker (Lewis Gilbert, 1979).
American actress and former model Lois Chiles (1947) is best known for her role as Bond Girl Dr Holly Goodhead in the James Bond film Moonraker (1979). Before entering films, she was one of the very top models of the 1970s. Her other screen credits include The Way We Were (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), Death on the Nile (1978), and Broadcast News (1987).
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls series. Carole Bouquet in For Your Eyes Only (John Glen, 1981).
Carole Bouquet (1957) is a French actress and fashion model. She is best known for her role as Bond Girl Melina Havelock in the 12th James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only (1981). In the following years, she became the face of the French fashion house Chanel. She also starred in Cet obscur objet du désir/That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), and Trop belle pour toi/Too Beautiful for You (1990), for which she won a César Award.
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls series. Maud Adams in Octopussy (John Glen, 1983).
Stunning Maud Adams is a Swedish-born ex-model who broke into film in 1970. She is the only Bond Girl who appeared in three James Bond films, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Octopussy (1983) and A View to a Kill (1985).
Vintage card in the Bond Girls series. Grace Jones in A View to a Kill (John Glen, 1985).
Grace Jones (1948) is a Jamaican singer, supermodel, and actress. Classic is her album 'Nightclubbing' (1981) and unforgettable are her hits 'La Vie en Rose', 'Pull Up to the Bumper' and 'I've Seen That Face Before'. She was also memorable as a James Bond villain in A View to a Kill (1985). But foremost, the unusual, androgynous, bold, dark-skinned artist was a style icon for the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls series. Maryam d'Abo in The Living Daylights (John Glen, 1987).
English actress Maryam d'Abo (1960) starred as Bond Girl Kara Milovy in The Living Daylights (1987) opposite Timothy Dalton as 007.
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls series. Carey Lowell in Licence to Kill (John Glen, 1989).
American actress Carey Lowell is a former leading fashion model, almost 5'10'' (1 m 78) tall. She was a favourite with designers such as Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. As an actress, she is best known as New York Assistant DA Jamie Ross in Law and Order (1996–2001, 2022) and as Bond girl Pam Bouvier in the James Bond film Licence to Kill (1989).
Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls Series. Izabella Scorupco in GoldenEye (Martin Campbell, 1995).
Izabella Scorupco (1970) is best known as Bond Girl Natalya Simonova in the James Bond film GoldenEye (1995) with Pierce Brosnan. She is also known for her cover of the Shirley & Company song 'Shame, Shame, Shame'.
Vintage card in the Bond Girls series. Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies (Roger Spottiswoode, 1997).
Malaysian-Chinese actress Michelle Yeoh (1962) is known to Western audiences through her roles in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), for which she received the Oscar. She is the second woman of colour to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Vintage card in the Bond Girls series. Sophie Marceau in The World is Not Enough (Michael Apted, 1999).
French actress Sophie Marceau (1966) became a European film star with a string of successful films, including La boum/The Party (1980), L'Étudiante/The Student (1988), Fanfan (1993), and La fille de D'Artagnan/Revenge of the Musketeers (1994). Internationally she became known for her performances in Braveheart (1995), and the 19th James Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999). She received a Cesar for La Boum 2 (1983) and she won a Moliere award for a stage production of 'Eurydice' in 1991.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.
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