Daniel Craig names his favourite ‘Bond girl’ of all time: “Nearly bigger than the movie”
The James Bond franchise is obligated to feature futuristic gadgets, fancy cars, megalomaniacal villains, and love interests aplenty, or else it won’t feel like 007 at all, but the role of the ‘Bond girl’ underwent a notable evolution during the decade and a half Daniel Craig spent under the tux.
For the first four decades of the globetrotting spy saga’s existence, women with major roles in any of the individual instalments functioned as little more than eye candy or conquests, with the suave secret agent rarely encountering a female character who was presented either on page or screen as a genuine match.
Even in Pierce Brosnan’s final stand, Die Another Day, there were major plans afoot for Halle Berry’s Jinx to make history several times over as the focal point of a standalone spinoff that could have potentially taken bond on a transformative new trajectory, but it wasn’t to be.
One of the major reasons why the series has remained at the forefront of pop culture for over 60 years is because it needs to adapt and embrace modernity or be left behind, something that was key to Craig’s tenure marking a natural and much-needed evolution of 007’s favoured tropes or trappings.
For one thing, his five-film stint was the first time any actor’s Bond career had felt like a genuine connective journey, with the leading man’s arc beginning with Casino Royale and carrying through Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, and Spectre before definitively ending in No Time to Die.
Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd was the shadow that haunted Bond throughout, while Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann served several key functions well beyond a romantic entanglement. Gemma Arterton’s Strawberry Fields may have missed the mark, but for the most part, the recent quintet placed more women on equal footing with the hero than ever before.
Craig didn’t name Green, Seydoux, Arterton, Monica Bellucci, Olga Kurylenko, Ana de Armas, or even Judi Dench as his favourite-ever ‘Bond girl’, though. That said, he did opt for an actor who bucked what had been the franchise’s trend at the time when she played a key role that was every bit as important to the narrative as MI6’s finest.
“Diana Rigg,” Craig answered without hesitation when pressed to name his number one ‘Bond girl’ by David Sheff. “She was good in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. She was the one ‘Bond girl’ who was nearly bigger than the movie.”
As Countess Tracy Di Vicenzo, Rigg teams up with – and regularly outshines – George Lazenby’s one-and-done Bond to take the fight to the malevolent organisation Spectre. Rigg even made history as the first character to marry 007, even if they didn’t get to enjoy their newlywed status for long, when she was gunned down and killed before the credits even had a chance to roll.
