“It was quite frightening”: the double-edged sword of being a ‘Bond girl’
Despite the apparent glitz and glamour of starring in a James Bond movie as a Bond girl, the role does not come without its challenges, namely a lack of substance, character, personality and clothes. Many women who have tackled this role have later been burdened with the ‘Bond girl curse’, an infamous Hollywood dry spell in which the women are barred from booking future roles, dismissed as being a Bond girl and nothing else.
In recent years, writers have attempted to resuscitate this feeble character. Ana De Armas and Eva Green symbolise a new era for Bond girls, a welcome (if slightly meaningless) change to a universe in which women are seen as damsels in distress or romantic distractions. However, one former Bond girl has recently spoken about her less-than-glamorous experience in the 1973 addition to the series.
Jane Seymour starred alongside Roger Moore in Live and Let Die, the eighth instalment of the Bond universe, in which she plays a psychic called Solitaire, who can only preserve her gift if she remains a virgin (yawn). However, she is so completely bowled over by Moore’s raw sex appeal and charm that she goes against the one stipulation of her psychic abilities, determined to seduce him and sleep with him. After losing her virginity to him, she also loses her powers and nearly dies, so all in all, a pretty tragic trajectory.
Seymour was only 20 when offered the part of Solitaire, and at this point in her career, she was relatively unknown, with small roles in Oh! What a Lovely War, The Only Way and The Onedin Line. When asked about her experience of suddenly being thrown into the limelight following her portrayal of Solitaire, Seymour said, “It was quite frightening. Before I even started, they had Terry O’Neill taking these crazy, beautiful photographs of me with very little on and doing an interview about how I liked to run naked through long grass. It was all made up”.
After acclimatising to sudden fame, Seymour explained that the Bond girl label became a hindrance to her career, explaining, “At the time, coming from obscurity, it was a very nice thing. It meant I had a job. But for all the doors it opened, it also slammed some shut.”
The acclaimed director John Schlesinger wanted to offer her a role until someone told him, says Seymour, that she was “a Bond girl. And that was it. Never heard from them again. That happened a few times.”
Live and Let Die is thankfully not the kind of movie that would be greenlit now, with Seymour expressing how baffled she was by the overt sexism and racism within the film, with her character losing all power after having sex for the first time, ultimately useless.
Since the last Bond film, many have speculated over whether the franchise will make a comeback, questioning whether the character of Bond has become obsolete in a modern world in which traditional masculinity is evolving. However, many are keen to see a twist on the story and resurrect the dated world of James Bond.
