The ‘Bond girl’ who hated being called a ‘Bond girl’: “I don’t like it”
The James Bond series is one of Britain’s most beloved cultural institutions, having attracted dedicated fans worldwide for decades. Based on the books by Ian Fleming, few people expected the series to become such a long-running and profitable franchise, especially when the campiness of the earlier movies in the series are taken into consideration.
However, the series’ perfect combination of action, suspense, and tongue-in-cheek comedy made James Bond a huge success, and since the first movie featuring 007, 1962’s Dr No, we’ve seen various actors take on the role of the iconic spy. There have also been various ‘Bond girls’, as they are affectionately known, over the years, although the depiction of these female characters has progressed dramatically since the early days of the franchise.
Often appearing scantily-clad or standing in as nothing more than a piece of arm candy for Bond, these actors often found themselves pigeonholeed because of their roles, even spawning the ‘Bond girl curse’. Some directors simply weren’t interested in working with an actor who had played a Bond girl, seeing them as nothing more than someone who was cast for their looks, not their skills. This was the case for Jane Seymour, who admitted that director John Schlesinger rescinded his interest in working with her when he realised she had been a Bond girl.
In more recent years, the characterisation of Bond girls have been much less stereotypical and objectified, although there are still strong connotations between the term ‘Bond girl’ and one-dimensional female characters. In fact, several Bond girls haven’t been too impressed with the term, including Honor Blackman, best known for playing Pussy Galore in Goldfinger.
In an interview with Paul Kirkley, the actor revealed, “I hate that term.” She elucidated: “Well, they can call other people Bond girls, but I don’t like it, for the simple reason that that character would have been a good character in any film, not just a Bond film. I consider Bond girls to be those ladies who took one look at Bond and fell on their backs. Whereas Pussy Galore was quite a character.”
Blackman was also surprised by the fact that people were so offended by the name of her character, explaining that “Some interviewers wouldn’t interview me, and those that did wouldn’t ever say the name. I wish everybody wouldn’t take things quite so seriously – I mean it’s Ian Fleming’s joke, isn’t it? It’s like Oddjob and Goldfinger and all those things.” Evidently, it seems as though Blackman felt her character was rather misunderstood, although Pussy Galore can often be found on lists of the best ‘Bond girls’ of all time.
Besides Blackman, a more recent female 007 star also dismissed the term ‘Bond girl’. Léa Seydoux, who portrayed Madeleine Swann in Spectre and No Time to Die, once revealed (via The Guardian), “I don’t consider myself a Bond girl. I think I’m not really the stereotyped Bond girl. I feel quite different. You can’t be like, ‘Oh, James.’ You have to find something else. She’s not a fighter, she’s a doctor. She fights in another way.”
