Carole Bouquet

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.


West German collector card by Kino.


Vintage postcard in the Bond Girls series. Carole Bouquet in For Your Eyes Only (John Glen, 1981).

An icon of icy beauty

Carole Bouquet was born in 1957 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Seine (now Hauts-de-Seine]) France. Carole and her older sister Laurence were brought up by their father, Robert Bouquet, a civil engineer, who was separated from their mother when Carole was 3. She was educated at a convent school. She studied briefly at the Sorbonne University but decided to try acting.

In 1976, she joined the CNSAD (the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art of Paris) for a three-year course, but during the first year, she met director Luis Buñuel through a casting session. She left school for a starring role opposite Fernando Rey in Buñuel's French-Spanish drama Cet obscur objet du désir / That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Buñuel, 1977). She shared the lead role of Conchita with Ángela Molina.

Bouquet won rave reviews for her film debut on both sides of the Atlantic, and her image as an “icon of icy beauty” was born. She left for New York to perfect her English and was chaperoned by Andy Warhol. On her return to France, she took part in a series of films, including the black comedy Buffet froid / Cold Buffet (Bertrand Blier, 1979), starring Gérard Depardieu.

She was interviewed for the lead role in the James Bond film Moonraker (John Glen, 1979) but lost the role to Lois Chiles. Nevertheless, she impressed director John Glen who cast her in the lead for the next Bond film For Your Eyes Only (John Glen, 1981).

She received good notices from critics and filmgoers for her performance as a revenge-seeking heroine. The producers excluded her from the film's publicity tour because of an earlier interview she gave where she said Roger Moore was old enough to be her father rather than a romantic lead, due to the thirty-year age difference.


German postcard by Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn. Photo: Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin. Carole Bouquet and Fernando Rey in Cet obscur objet du désir / That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Buñuel, 1977).

The face of Chanel

In the 1980s and 1990s, Carole Bouquet became the face of Chanel, taking over from Catherine Deneuve. She embodied the image of No 5 perfume in two commercials directed by Ridley Scott and then Bettina Rheims. Bouquet was the girlfriend of late producer Jean-Pierre Rassam between 1978 and 1985. They have a son, Dimitri Rassam (1982), who is also a producer. She had a second son, Louis Giacobetti (1988) with photographer Francis Giacobetti. From 1991 to 1996, she was married to immunologist Jacques Leibowitch.

In 1984, she appeared alongside Coluche, Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault in the French-Italian comedy Le Bon Roi Dagobert / Dagobert (Dino Risi, 1984). That year, she was nominated for a César for Best Supporting Actress in Rive droite, rive gauche / Right Bank, Left Bank (Philippe Labro, 1984), alongside Gérard Depardieu.

In 1990, she won the César for Best Actress for her role in Trop belle pour toi / Too Beautiful for You (Bertrand Blier, 1990) opposite Gérard Depardieu and Josiane Balasko. She starred with Francesco Nuti in the Italian romantic comedy Donne con le gonne / Women in Skirts (Francesco Nuti, 1991), the highest-grossing Italian film in Italy in 1992. In 1997, she played a passionate Lucie Aubrac in Claude Berri's biographical film Lucie Aubrac, alongside Daniel Auteuil.

She was engaged to Gérard Depardieu from 2003 to 2005. She had been with him since 1997 except for a break up of a few weeks in the summer of 2002. In 2004, she had a small role in the US television series Sex and the City. In 2011, she became a grandmother, when her son Dimitri Rassam and his wife, Russian model Masha Novoselova had their first child. Carole Bouquet starred on TV in the Mini-Series Rosemary's Baby (Agnieszka Holland, 2014) with Zoe Saldana, played a serial killer in La Mante / The Mantis (Alexandre Laurent, 2017) and a therapist in the series En thérapie / In Therapy (Éric Toledano, Olivier Nakache, 2021-2022).

In the cinema, she appeared in such well-received films as the drama Impardonnables / Unforgivable (André Téchiné, 2011) starring André Dussollier, and the comedy Une heure de tranquillité / Do Not Disturb (Patrice Leconte, 2014), starring Christian Clavier. On 21 May 2014, Bouquet formalised her relationship with Philippe Sereys de Rothschild on the red carpet of the 37th Festival de Cannes, of which she was one of the jury members. She has been running a winery, Maison Carole Bouquet, on the island of Pantelleria in the Strait of Sicily since 2005.


French postcard by Editions LMP, no. SH 006. Photo: Studio Harcourt, 1995.


French postcard by Cart a Pub for La Voix de l'Enfant, 2001. Photo: André Rau. Caption: The most beautiful legs of the cinema.

Sources: Pedro Borges (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch, French and English) and IMDb.