Ex-Bond girl Britt Ekland says next 007 should be more like Sir Roger Moore
DANIEL CRAIG set hearts pounding when he revealed his finely honed pecs this week – then broke those same hearts by confirming he has made his last James Bond film.
But one woman who won’t be pining for him as 007 is former Bond girl Britt Ekland.
While the 77-year-old actress admires the success of Craig’s 21st century movies she wants the next Bond to be a lot more like the late screen icon Sir Roger Moore.
A man who can deliver a cheeky double entendre with a twinkle in his eye is preferable to one with a well worn gym membership, she reckons.
“Daniel is not my Bond,” declares Britt, resplendent in pink Zandra Rhodes dress when we meet at London’s Richmond Theatre, where she is starring in the thriller The Cat And The Canary.
“He is what young people want today. Roger Moore is my Bond. I like that kind of Bond — suave, elegant, well spoken, cheeky.”
Even so, she does admit to being impressed by 52-year-old Daniel’s body after he peeled off to pose for April’s GQ magazine.
Britt says: “Although my idea of Bond will always be Roger Moore, it’s refreshing to see Daniel looking so well defined — just as you’d expect a modern Bond to be.
“Roger was a charmer, Daniel looks every inch the killer spy. He is a perfect Bond for people of today.”
Swedish-born Britt starred as secret agent Mary Goodnight alongside Sir Roger in the 1974 Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun.
She was a sex symbol through the 1960s and 1970s, hitting the headlines for her four-year marriage to Peter Sellers and then dating Rod Stewart.
She knows what she likes in a man — and has very clear requirements for any actor who fancies taking over the Bond role.
Britt says: “I don’t think he can be so young. My personal preference is that he should be tall, not an extraordinarily buff body, just fit enough.
“He should have brown hair, slightly longish, slightly below the ears. He should look approachable and have a cheeky chappy look in his eyes.”
‘I don’t enjoy women being superheroes’
What is clear from speaking to Britt is that she doesn’t align herself with the modern woke generation.
Born in Stockholm in 1942, she has little time for political correctness or feminist calls for a woman to take over as 007.
She says: “Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond books and that’s the answer to who he should be. I don’t enjoy women being superheroes.
“Everything is too serious today. People go to the theatre because their lives are so boring, everything has been taken away from them.
“Everything is politically correct now and it certainly wasn’t then.”
For Britt, the essential elements of Bond are exciting effects, new gadgets — and beautiful girls.
When I ask her if her character Mary Goodnight, who killed one of the baddie’s henchmen, was a “strong woman” she shrugs and insists she isn’t interested in such empowerment issues.
And flying in the face of current thinking that actresses shouldn’t be defined by their appearance, Britt believes looking good naked is part of the Bond gig.
She says: “You don’t analyse Bond girls, you take them for what they are. They should be exactly what I was — blonde, thinnish, cute, able to wear or not wear clothes, and taking good direction, which I did.”
Britt wore a bikini for a considerable part of The Man With The Golden Gun, and it was going topless in another film that helped her to secure the role.
She reveals that she was chosen to play Mary Goodnight because the film’s now deceased producer, Cubby Broccoli, wrongly believed she had big boobs.
Cubby, who started the Bond film franchise with his business partner Harry Saltzman in 1962, saw Britt in the cult 1973 movie The Wicker Man, in which she dances naked.
'He thought I would make a good Bond girl because I had boobs'
What Cubby didn’t realise was that she had been lent extra curves by being pregnant with her second child.
Britt says: “He thought I would make a good Bond girl because I had boobs in The Wicker Man and when I arrive on set for The Man With The Golden Gun I am super-skinny and have two children with me. My boobs were not there.
"He used to have these dinners every Saturday where he always made sure I had more spaghetti than anyone else, so I would put back on what I had lost.”
Yet for all the boob talk, Britt is keen to insist that both Cubby and Roger Moore were “perfect gentlemen” throughout.
She clearly had a great time making The Man With The Golden Gun, talking excitedly about witnessing the famous stunt where Bond’s red AMC Hornet muscle car performs a corkscrew jump over a broken bridge.
Britt even laughs off the moment when she nearly suffered life-changing injuries when a stunt went wrong.
While running from a lab explosion her backside was singed when she strayed too close to a pyrotechnic blast. Britt recalls: “It touched my bottom and I threw myself on the ground. Roger drags me up and keeps running — you can see it in the film.
“When you’re scared you go, because you don’t want to die.”
She had wanted to be a Bond girl prior to being cast, and had angled for the role.
At the time she was already a well established actress, having appeared in movies such as 1971 crime caper Get Carter with Michael Caine, though Britt believes it neither helped nor hindered her career.
She says she was a “celebrity” because of her marriage to Peter Sellers, which ended in 1968 due to his cruel behaviour, and her relationship with Rod Stewart.
Even so, Britt thinks the Maggie May singer — who was embarking on his solo career at the time — benefited more from the Press coverage.
'I like single life. I take off when I want to’
She says: “The publicity he got from dating a Bond girl was great for him. I was part of getting him fame. I did five of his videos. It was fun for a while.”
In 1984 Britt married Stray Cats drummer Jim Phantom and gave birth to their son Thomas — her third child — in 1988. The couple divorced in 1992 and for the past 20 years she has been single.
She says: “I like my single life, but I invite some lovely men around, and I like that too.
“I don’t think I could put up with anyone and I am not sure anyone could put up with me. I like my life the way it is. It is very easy and comfortable. I take off when I want to.”
Her main home is in Los Angeles these days, but at the moment she is touring Britain in The Cat And The Canary.
What drives her now is not fame but the chance to use it for good purposes.
At the end of the interview she asks that I mention her campaign to have newborns in Britain screened for the genetic disease ALD, which can affect the brain.
Doctors know her three-year-old grandson Lucas has the condition because he was checked for it at birth in California.
That means he now receives a six-monthly MRI scan and as soon as any signs of damage to his brain appear he will receive the stem cell therapy he would need to live a healthy life.
Britt, who is a patron of the Alzheimer’s Society and Alex TLC charities, says: “I am looking at getting birth screening in Britain by campaigning to get the Government to bring it in.”
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Her influence comes, more than anything else, from her association with the world of 007.
And her time on the world’s longest-running movie series is not something she wishes to forget.
Britt concludes: “I am very proud to be a Bond girl.”
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