Bond Girls Vs. Bond Women0

Written By Cheng Hui Jie

After 50 won­der­ful years since the first 007 flick, the cast, crew and plot kept on chang­ing but there is prob­a­bly just one thing that remained con­stant over the total of 23 films: the Bond Girls. The Bond Girls are always stun­ning beyond words, per­fectly pretty and never unat­trac­tively ugly.

Being a Bond Girl in the movie indus­try is like being a Victoria’s Secret Angel in the mod­el­ing indus­try. They are eas­ily con­sid­ered the most beau­ti­ful females from all around the world who are (mostly) blessed with the beauty and the brains.

Recently, comic cre­ator Martha Thomases sug­gested that Judi Dench was more than a Bond Girl after pub­lish­ing an arti­cle on why Dench (who plays Head of M16, M since Goldeneye in 1995) is NOT a Bond Girl. We are curi­ous to know if the rest of the females should now be con­sid­ered as Bond Women too!

Putting aside Daniel Craig’s top choice for the M16 agent’s next love interest/ bond girl, we are going inter­na­tional as we intro­duce all of you to arguably some of the best Bond Girls (or should I say, Bond Women) the world have ever seen.

From Switzerland

Who would be a bet­ter Bond Girl to start with than the orig­i­nal Bond Girl, Ursula Andress? Andress per­formed splen­didly as shell diver named Honey Ryder in the ear­li­est 007 film (Dr. No in 1962). She man­aged to set a fairly high bench­mark for the rest of the bril­liant girls who fol­lowed her foot­steps as Mr. James Bond’s girls and won the title of Best Bond Girl from an unsci­en­tific poll con­ducted by UK’s Daily Mail.

In fact, Andress became a known as a Bond Legacy after she man­aged to cre­ate one of the most famous sequences in the entire cin­e­matic his­tory. I am refer­ring to the scene where she emerged from the waters, look­ing gor­geous in her white bikini that was later auc­tioned off in 2001 at £35,000! 007 Costume Designer Jan Termime even men­tioned in an inter­view that she “was work­ing in a Paris bou­tique and had 100 women a day ask­ing for Ursula’s bathing suit.”

From England

As the home­land to most of the Bond girls, there were just too many of them who are among best ones. Here are 5 pretty ladies that stood out from the crowd.

First up, we have Honor Blackman who acted as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964). As the old­est (37 at that time) and one of the most pop­u­lar Bond Girl of all time, I guess it was no big­gie when Blackman “used to be so upset” that she can­not play nice because Galore was a con­fi­dent and tough diva who “turned straight” after mes­mer­iz­ing and being mes­mer­ized by Mr. James Bond.

Apart from Blackman’s beauty, it was her role’s dou­ble enten­dre name that brought about her cur­rent fame. Pussy Galore actu­ally became a con­tro­versy in the 1960s when peo­ple were more conservative.

Another great Bond Girl from England and one of my per­sonal favourites, would be Jane Seymour who played Solitaire in 1973’s Live & Let Die.

Solitaire was a very mys­te­ri­ous but naïve fortune-teller who pos­sessed and lost her super­nat­ural gift of Tarot-card read­ing after los­ing her vir­gin­ity to Mr. Bond.

This effort­lessly gor­geous lady was iron­i­cally asked to dye her hair black and put on con­tact lenses to even out her eye color for this role because she suf­fers from het­e­rochro­mia (maybe Professor Xavier from X-men First Class finds her attrac­tive too?) after being told she was per­fect for the role.

“ I was very inno­cent when I got the part. I was 20. I’d been in The Onedin Line but a Bond movie — it wasn’t some­thing I aspired to. I was hop­ing to do a good BBC drama, maybe some the­atre. Next thing I knew I was in a Bond film,” Seymour shared in an inter­view along with her “mini” obses­sion with Maltesers.

Next, we have hot-favourite Tania Mallet, who played Tilly Masterson in Goldfinger (1964) . It was said that she got her role after some­one sent her bikini pic­ture to a Bond pro­ducer Cubby Broccoli.

Initially, Mallet was reluc­tant to take up the role, claim­ing that she sim­ply could not afford being an actress,

“ … I earned more that that in a day (from) mod­el­ing, so that six months” she worked (or was retained to work) on Goldfinger  were (a) real sacrifice.”

On a side note, we are sure we sensed Mallet’s tinge of jeal­ousy towards Maud Adams, whom she brought up in an inter­view as “a far bet­ter model than actress” that we could say “made it” in films as the only Bond Girl who appeared twice.

At the end of the inter­view, she also voiced out her opin­ion on Bond Girls com­ing back,

“I don’t think any Bond girl should come back – they should all be dif­fer­ent. That’s part of the ethos.”

Lastly, let us intro­duce two more note-worthy English Bond Girls.

And there was the “Golden girl” Shirley Eaton who played Tilly Masterson’s sis­ter in Goldfinger. Eaton was lit­er­ally “gold” when she was por­trayed as Jill Masterson, who was iron­i­cally painted gold before dying as the first Bond Girl who died on-screen.

She also proved the urban leg­end that one would die of “skin suf­fo­ca­tion” when fully cov­ered in paint, wrong.

The sweet and lovely Maryam d’Abo hosted and co-wrote the 007 doc­u­men­tary– Bond Girls are Forever: The Women of James Bond (2002) as a Bond Girl her­self and recently suf­fered from seri­ous brain hem­or­rhage. Poor thing!

From America

Moving on to the American beau­ties, we can­not help but notice the “Razzie Award” and “Worst Bond Girl” trend among them. We will leave it to you to decide if their “awards” were justifiable.

Carey Lowell was an ex-Army pilot and CIA infor­mat and the first short­haired Bond Girl, Pam Bouvier (License to Kill — 1989). She was named the 7^th worst Bond Girl by UK’s Daily Mail. We just hope her hubby Richard Gere would approve! 

“I didn’t fall into the cat­e­gory of the ‘clas­sic Bond girl, I had short hair — and no Bond girl before me ever had. They put me in a wig at the begin­ning of the film and then had my char­ac­ter cut her hair to pre­tend to be some­one else. That was to explain why my hair was short, “ Lowell told NYDailyNews.com why her char­ac­ter was not the typ­i­cal sassy Blonde (oops, I meant Bond) girl.

Lowell also told Bond Girls are Forever host, Maryam d’Abo (also her co-star) that she learnt how to fire a gun with­out flinch­ing as part of her role’s require­ment and on how “sex sells” in an audi­tion or rather, when audi­tion­ing to be Bond Girl.

And now for the girl on the top of UK’s Daily Mail’s “Worst Bond Girl” list, Denise Richards who also hap­pened to be pre­sented with a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress for this par­tic­u­lar role. She played atomic physi­cist and weapon expert, Dr. Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough (1999). Maybe she did not do enough for her role, get it?

Fortunately for her, there was another American Bond Girl to share her mis­for­tune with. The sec­ond most-hated Bond Girl was Tanya Roberts who per­formed as Geologist Stacey Sutton in 1985’s A View to a Kill.

This may sound like a shock but maybe not much. Who says Hollywood sex sym­bols, Charlie’s Angels and Bond Girls must be well loved, right?

Oscar-winning American Actress Halle Berry needs no intro­duc­tion as Jinx, the Bond Girl who paid a trib­ute to Andress’s legacy when she emerged from the waters in an Orange bikini sim­i­lar to her white one in Die Another Day (2002). Halle Berry’s char­ac­ter was born on Friday the 13^th and was hence nick­named Jinx.

She was the only actress who won an Oscar before being casted as a Bond Girl. Ironically, she was also one of the only actresses who col­lected her Razzie Award in 2005 for her Catwoman role.

“It was some­thing I can hon­estly tell you I’m proud I was a part of,” Berry described how she felt as a Bond Girl for NYDailyNews.com.

From Asia

As a fre­quent trav­eller, it was only expected that Mr. Bond’s taste in women switch between Occident and Oriental from time to time.

Mr. Bond showed his fond­ness for “kawaii” girls in You Only Live Twice (1967) when he fell in love with Japanese secret agent Kissy Suzuki (played by Mie Hama) and made her his first and only child-bearer to an Anglo-Asian son– James Suzuki. Mie Hama became the first Asian Bond Girl and the First Asian to appear in the Playboy magazine.

The love­birds tied the knot under a “fake arranged mar­riage”, posed as a way to give Bond cover in a fish­ing vil­lage where they did inves­ti­ga­tions on a M16 mission.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we present to you Malaysian-Chinese actress Michelle Yeoh who acted as Wai Lin in the 1997 bond film– Tomorrow Never Dies. Widely rec­og­nized by Singaporeans as “Anlene’s” spokesper­son, she lived up to her name by chore­o­graph­ing some and per­form­ing her own stunts in the film.

As another Bond Girl who refused to admit to have fallen for Mr. Bond’s charm, Wai Lin put up a strong match against him, emo­tion­ally and physically.

“As that was my first English-language film, it was impor­tant to me to play an action hero — and not just be a notch on Bond’s bed­post,” Yeoh explained that Wai Lin may be a tra­di­tional Chinese trained in mar­tial arts, but not the tra­di­tional Bond Girl.

From Italy

Moving on to Italy where Mr. Bond might be able to get the best of “both” worlds from, con­sid­er­ing that Italy is in both the east­ern and west­ern hemisphere.

Former Miss Rome and runner-up for Miss World, Italian Daniella Bianchi played the beau­ti­ful Russian eye­candy Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love (1963).

Her voice was dubbed for the role but it did not mat­ter because most Bond Girls were not casted for their act­ing abilities.

From France

Now for some roman­tic French girls that Mr. Bond have man­aged to seduce and get seduced by, once again.

Eva Green was a for­eign liai­son agent, Vesper Lynd in 2006’s Casino Royale. She was assigned to “take care” of Mr. Bond’s fund man­ag­ing issues but was later found to be a dou­ble agent work­ing for Quantum (one of the villains).

Despite appear­ing flaw­less on-screen, the French actress expressed “inse­cu­ri­ties” she had about her body on-screen dur­ing an inter­view with UK’s Daily Mail. We can­not blame her when she was ranked 6^th on Mr. Blackwell’s 18^th Annual Worst Dressed Women List in 2008.

She said “I opened a mag­a­zine the other day and they called me the worst-dressed per­son in the world.” and added, “And I was like, I like that dress.” dur­ing the same inter­view.

Finally, we have the sexy Bérénice Marlohe, the lastest Bond Girl from the 23^rd install­ment in the James Bond’s series – Skyfall.

Of Cambodian, Chinese and French descent, play­ing Sévérine must have been a huge chal­lenge for Marlohe as it was her “first English-speaking role”. However, it seems like clinch­ing the role was a big­ger chal­lenge to her.

LA Times reported last month that “Marlohe was told time and again she didn’t have what it takes to become a movie star,” since eight years ago when she started her act­ing career.

It was due more on of her tall-build that may “over­power” the main actors in the show and some­times because of her Eurasian heritage.

Her co-star is the other stun­ning beauty Naomie Harris (M’s assis­tant Ms MoneyPenny), who was best known for her role as Calypso in the 2^nd and 3^rd Pirates of Carribean movies.

The Ultimate Bondwoman

Differentiating her­self form the rest of the “Bond Women” or “Bond Girls”, Judi Dench put her act­ing skills to the test and opted for sub­stance over style when she first accepted the role of M16 Head (for­merly played by male actors– Bernard Lee and Robert Brown) in Goldeneye (1995). She onced praised Goldeneye’s “won­der­fully writ­ten script” in the 007 doc­u­men­tary.

Even after play­ing as James Bond’s super strict but cool as cucum­ber supe­rior, M for 007 of the 007 film series, she admit­ted to get­ting very ner­vous for every sin­gle one of them, includ­ing her lat­est mas­ter­piece per­for­mance in Skyfall.

Being her humor­ous off-screen self, she told STV’s host two months ago, why she feels more com­fort­able act­ing in plays,

“… A great friend of mine said who went to see the cast and crew show­ing of Goldeneye, be pre­pared that your face is twince the size of your house (on the movie screen).”

Here are some bite-sized tid­bits on this amaz­ing actress:

This Oscar win­ning actress enjoys horse rac­ing and wanted to become a painter or dancer as a child but stud­ied set design­ing at an art school instead before start­ing her act­ing debut as a “snail” in Junior school Production in 1934. Oh wait, her “pro­fes­sional” debut hap­pened in 1957 under Old Vic’s Liverpool pro­duc­tion where she played Ophelia of Hamlet.

The Verdict

“Oh no, keep it a Bond girl. Goodness… I think a bond girl is sex­ier, isn’t it?” was what Bond “girl” Rosamund Pike (who played Miranda Frost in 2002’s Die Another Day) replied when asked on the idea of Bond Girls turn­ing into Bond Women in the 007 doc­u­men­tary.

All of them have donned the big screens as glam­orous, sexy and intel­li­gent char­ac­ters and are ALL win­ners, regard­less of them being Bond Girls or Bond Women. This was all made pos­si­ble by the incred­i­ble global expo­sure from the 007 spy film series.

Did we men­tion how the lat­est 007 block­buster, Skyfall was worth every cent? Despite the slightly poor-planned plot, Director Sam Mendes per­fected the rest of the many other aspects of the film, includ­ing get­ting some­one as pro­fes­sional as Javier Bardem to be the villain.

What are you wait­ing for? Seize your last chance to catch Harris’ Ms. MoneyPenny and Marlohe’s Sévérine (again) in the­atres island-wide!