The Pierce Brosnan-approved ‘Bond girl’ who didn’t want the job: “I’m no good with bikinis”
Every actor who plays James Bond will spend the rest of their career talking about the fact they played James Bond, and some of cinema’s former 007s have accepted it better than others.
George Lazenby doesn’t mind, which is understandable when he’s done fuck all with the rest of his career, and if he wasn’t interested in reminiscing as his one-and-done stint under the tux in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, then would anybody really have any reason to talk to him at all?
Sean Connery carved out a legendary, Academy Award-winning career for himself away from the iconic spy franchise, but even at that, he could never outrun Bond’s shadow. He eventually resigned himself to it, but for a long time, even mentioning the character in his presence could be a recipe for disaster.
As the two most recent Bonds, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig still have relatively short fuses when their career-defining role is brought up. As working actors, they’ve frequently got new films to promote, and since they used to save the world on a regular basis as Ian Fleming’s legendary creation, it’s never not going to come up, although their shared response is usually some variation on “I don’t give a fuck.”
The former was a little different when he’d freshly vacated the part, though, unlike Craig, who’s already shown on several occasions that, as inevitable as it will be for the rest of his professional life, the worst and laziest thing any member of the press or media can do in front of him is bring up that damned 007.
Between Brosnan’s swansong in Die Another Day and Craig’s debut in Casino Royale, the star who also headlined GoldenEye, The World Is Not Enough, and Tomorrow Never Dies was asked who he wanted to see take on ‘Bond girl’ duties in the secret agent’s next outing, which he knew he’d have nothing to do with, and his success rate turned out to be 50/50.
He named Monica Bellucci, who’d go on to appear opposite Craig in Spectre, and Keira Knightley. On that front, we can only hope that he wasn’t imagining himself as Bond in the latter scenario, seeing as when he made those comments in March 2004, Knightley had recently turned 19, while he was 50.
As a young, attractive, fast-rising, and famous British star, it was an easy choice to suggest that Knightley could be the next in line to potentially suffer from the ‘Bond girl’ curse, which had recently befallen Rosamund Pike, who made her feature-length debut opposite Brosnan in Die Another Day and would play the sister of Knightley’s Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice the following year.
However, in the summer of ’04, the Pirates of the Caribbean favourite admitted it wasn’t something on her radar. “I don’t think I have the assets to be a ‘Bond girl,'” she explained. “Anyway, I’m no good with bikinis. They always have to wear bikinis, don’t they, ‘Bond girls’?” For the most part, yes, but despite Brosnan’s endorsement, her lack of enthusiasm was palpable.
