The only ‘Bond girl’ banned from appearing onscreen: “I’m afraid you wouldn’t stop the traffic”
Befitting the franchise’s reputation as a product of its time, it’s not even surprising to know that the most unsung and underappreciated female actor in James Bond history was denied a role because the director didn’t think she was attractive enough to appear on camera.
While cinema’s most iconic secret agent has evolved with the times to remain a cultural staple over 60 years after Sean Connery’s debonair debut in Dr No, it took even longer for the women who played major characters to stop being viewed as nothing more than eye candy or sex symbols.
Some of the stars who were there to serve little other narrative function than make doe eyes at the hero and had a funny habit of turning up dead before the third act had no issues with becoming a ‘Bond girl,’ but others openly regretted the detrimental impact it had on their careers.
It was an archetype that varied on a case-by-case basis depending on who played it, what they’d achieved before, what they’d accomplished afterwards, and how fondly – or not – they’d remember their time spent as part of the industry’s marquee espionage series. However, nobody got a shorter shrift than Nikki van der Zyl.
The name may not even ring a bell for the most devoted of 007 aficionados, but she was a staple of the Connery and Moore years. The German-born actor was a fixture in the recording booth for almost two decades as the voice behind several memorable figures, including Dr No‘s Ursula Andress, Goldfinger‘s Shirley Eaton, and Live and Let Die‘s Jane Seymour as a dubbing and re-recording artist.
In fact, she contributed to ten Bond flicks overall, which means that longtime Miss Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell, is the only female actor to have been involved in more. And yet, when she voiced her frustrations with the globetrotting saga refusing to acknowledge her contributions, she was effectively blacklisted and wiped from the history books.
While she was working on Dr No, and it should be noted that Van der Zyl provided the voice for Honey Ryder, which won Andress a Golden Globe for ‘Most Promising Newcomer’, she asked director Terence Young if there was a character she could play in the in-development follow-up, From Russia with Love.
“He said, ‘No, I’m afraid you wouldn’t stop the traffic, Nikki,'” she recalled in her memoir, For Your Ears Only. “However, the good-looking young man in the corner came up to me and said in a loud voice, ‘I’d stop the traffic for you any day’. That voice belonged to Sean Connery.”
Van der Zyl voiced over a dozen characters across Dr No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, and Moonraker, but when she inquired about playing even a minor onscreen role, she was immediately shut down and never got the chance to do so.
