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Bond girls: short skirts, shorter careers

Broadcast Date: Dec. 16, 1983

Pussy Galore. Plenty O'Toole. Holly Goodhead. Memorable names to be sure, but who remembers who played these sexy, sophisticated and absurdly named seductresses? Bond girl status is one of the ultimate show-biz measurements of sex appeal, but it also seems to be a career-killer. In this 1983 broadcast, CBC-TV's Coming Attractions looks at the career malaise that hits most Bond girls after their adventures with 007, and asks a few of them whether Bond's license to kill inadvertently helped kill their careers.

Bond girls: short skirts, shorter careers

• Ursula Andress is universally acknowledged as one of the best, if not the best, Bond girls of all time according to fan polls, movie magazines and critics. She famously appeared in a white bikini in the 1962 movie Dr. No and quickly became a standard by which other Bond girls are judged (although maybe not in terms of acting - Andress's Swedish accent was so thick that it had to be overdubbed by another actress during post-production).

• While the vast majority of Bond girls were relative unknowns before their onscreen adventures with 007, a number of established actresses began appearing as Bond girls starting in the 1990s. Stars such as Famke Janssen, Sophie Marceau, Michelle Yeoh and Academy Award-winner Halle Berry all cavorted with Bond in more recent films.

•The one former Bond girl who went on to the greatest success was Kim Basinger, who played Domino Petachi in the 1983 Bond movie Never Say Never Again. Basinger later starred in such hits as 9½ Weeks and Batman and also won an Academy Award in 1997 for her role in L.A. Confidential.

Bond girls: short skirts, shorter careers

Medium: Television

Program: Coming Attractions

Broadcast Date: Dec. 16, 1983

Guest(s): Maud Adams, Barbara Carerra, Jill St. John

Host: Bob Karstens, Patricia White

Duration: 3:11

Last updated:
Nov. 4, 2008