Bond On Bond by Roger Moore Read Free Book Online Page A

Bach with his usual aplomb:
    ‘There isn’t an actress today, with the possible exception of Barbra Streisand, who can open a film. We explored a certain lady in Hollywood who commands a $500,000 fee and that blew her right out of the box for me because she’d contribute no more than Barbara Bach.’
    I used to pull her leg, of course, dubbing her Barbara-Back-to-Front, and in Luxor when we left for the location each morning we’d always pass hundreds of black-burka-clad women.
    ‘The nuns are out early again,’ I said, rather lightheartedly.
    ‘Oh, are they all Catholics here?’ she asked earnestly.
    She and Ringo are now neighbours of mine in Monaco, and we still see each other from time to time.
A ONE-WOMAN BOND
    In my final outing, I was joined by Mary Stavin, Fiona Fullerton, Tanya Roberts and Grace Jones.
    She who shall remain nameless.
    A day in a hot tub with Fiona could never be considered ‘work’ really, could it? And floating away on board a submarine with Mary Stavin must be many men’s dream. As to the others, I’ll leave it there, I think.
    Another obligatory posse. Do I complain?
     
    ‘Would you like it harder, Miss Fullerton?’ – the massage I meant! A de-briefing scene from
A View To A Kill
.
     
    In
Quantum Of Solace
Olga Kurylenko provided Bond’s back-up girl, Camille.
    Post-me, in the mid-1980s, HIV/AIDS was becoming a major issue in the world and Bond writers felt that Timothy Dalton’s new 007 should not be as promiscuous as my 007. He therefore became a one-woman Bond with Maryam d’Abo’s Kara Milovy in
The Living Daylights
but stepped up a gear in
Licence To Kill
with two romantic interests, Carey Lowell and Talisa Soto.
    Nice to see you back, Miss Vesper Lynd. The only lady to really break Bond’s heart was played by Eva Green in
Casino Royale
.
     
    Whereas Paris Carver, an old flame, sadly went to bed with Bond too soon after the film started. I keep telling them not to bed him in the first reel or they’ll die, but they don’t listen.
     
    Famke Janssen and Isabella Scorupco were the two female leads in
GoldenEye
.
    When Pierce came along, the team took the decision to introduce a few more well-known actresses to the franchise, such as Teri Hatcher, Michelle Yeoh, Denise Richards and Halle Berry – who won her Oscar mid-production on
Die Another Day
for the movie
Monster’s Ball
. In a nod to
Dr. No,
Halle emerged from the ocean in a sexy bikini in the film’s only main location; the majority of filming was studio-bound. She proved such a popular character that producers felt a
Jinx
spin-off movie would be a sure-fire hit. Neil Purvis and Robert Wade were engaged to write a script; Stephen Frears was reportedly keen to direct and all looked set … until MGM got nervous about the budget, and felt they’d rather have another Bond film than risk launching a new franchise. MGM cited ‘creative differences’.
    A more feisty Bond girl came in the shape of Pam Bouvier in
Licence To Kill,
played by Carey Lowell.
    With Daniel Craig came Eva Green as Vesper Lynd. The character’s name, incidentally, is a pun on West Berlin, signifying Vesper’s divided loyalties as a double agent under Soviet control. Eva became the fifth French actress to be cast as a Bond girl. Following in her footsteps was Ukrainian-born Olga Kurylenko in
Quantum Of Solace
as Camille, with a backstory of child abuse akin to Ian Fleming’s original flawed heroines.
    Maryam d’Abo was the only Bond girl in
The Living Daylights
, when worries about HIV/AIDS were at their height.
     
    The twentieth Bond film, in the fortieth year, paid homage to some of the earlier films, most notable here with Halle Berry re-creating Ursula Andress’s famous scene in
Dr. No
.
     
    Christmas Jones was played by Denise Williams, and in her case proved Christmas came more than once a year.
    Moneypenny
    The lovely Lois Maxwell was a Canadian actress whom I first met way back during my time at RADA. We often appeared in the