What is it like to be forever known as a Bond Girl? Caroline Munro tells all
Caroline Munro, the Bond Girl in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’, is quick to shrug off accusations that the phrase is sexist – on the contrary, she tells James Rampton, it’s something to celebrate
Nearly half a century after appearing alongside Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me as Naomi, a dastardly helicopter pilot scheming to down 007, the 72-year-old actress Caroline Munro is still called a “Bond Girl”. In this very different, #MeToo, era does she mind about that? Not a bit!
Speaking to The Independent this week, she says: “I feel very honoured to be a little part of the huge, legendary Bond franchise.” Munro, who is still an immensely popular fixture on the 007 convention circuit, adds: “People ask whether or not the phrase Bond Girl is sexist, but I think it’s fine. To be called a Bond anything is wonderful! My fellow Bond Girl Martine Beswick [who appeared in both From Russia with Love (1963) and Thunderball (1965)] and I actually quite like it. Why not? It sounds very young!
“It is not something to resent – it’s definitely something to celebrate. I feel very lucky to have been a Bond Girl. It’s opened a lot of doors and led to a lot of other work for me.”
Munro makes for entertaining company. The actress exhibits the quality that we Brits prize above all others: self-deprecation. For example, she expresses amazement that people still know who she is. “I’m still in the limelight, which is very strange after all these years. It’s a miracle because it doesn’t usually happen to us oldies. I can’t believe I’m still here!”
The actress, who is presenting The Cellar Club, showcasing terrific, yet neglected movies at 9pm every Friday on Talking Pictures TV, points out that as a Bond Girl she is rubbing shoulders with acting royalty. “I met Judi Dench [who played 007’s boss M in seven Bond movies] at a Unicef gala at Stoke Poges, and she’s so sweet and funny. She likes to be called a Bond Girl. I love that fact. She’s the best actress in the world, so for her to say that is amazing. We couldn’t be in better company. Dame Judi Dench!”
In fact, according to Munro, if you’re a Bond Girl, you move in very exclusive circles. Over the past 59 years, the roster has included such splendid performers as Diana Rigg, Ursula Andress, Halle Berry, Eva Green, Kim Basinger, Jane Seymour, Grace Jones, Sophie Marceau, Rosamund Pike, Britt Ekland, Barbara Bach, Michelle Yeoh, Naomie Harris, Teri Hatcher, Famke Janssen, Monica Bellucci, Léa Seydoux, Gemma Arterton and Carole Bouquet.
Munro, who has two grown-up daughters, Georgina and Iona, says: “Whenever I get to meet the other Bond Women – or should that be Bond Girls? – they’re all such amazing people.
“As well as Martine, I’m friends with Maddie Smith, Valerie Leon, Lana Wood, Maryam d’Abo, Gloria Hendry and Shirley Eaton. I love seeing them because when we meet, we never stop talking. We’re all totally different and have different ideas, but it’s a lovely club to be part of.”
These characters have been absolutely fundamental to the global success of the 007 franchise for more than half a century. Part of the reason for their popularity is their strength.
It has to go that way because life is going that way. You’re not just an adornment. It’s nice to be a bit of an adornment, but it’s nice also to have a bit of say-so, I think
A passionate advocate of female empowerment, Munro argues that the Bond Girls were never a pushover. Despite the fact that they were sometimes saddled with silly double-entendre names such as Honey Ryder, Pussy Galore, Plenty O’Toole, Xenia Onatopp, or Holly Goodhead, they always gave 007 a run for his money.
All the same, the actress would be the first to acknowledge that the role of Bond Girl has had to change with the times. The films have had to take into account the fact that the role of women in society has changed quite dramatically since the first 007 movie, Dr No, was made in 1962.
Indeed, the producers have clearly accepted that by hiring the multi-award-winning Fleabag and Killing Eve writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge to sprinkle her own particular brand of magic on the script of the latest Bond film, No Time to Die.
Munro says: “I think we were pretty strong in those days – for then. But the scripts obviously are written differently now. The women in the scripts are more equal to Bond now.
“It has to go that way because life is going that way. You’re not just an adornment. It’s nice to be a bit of an adornment, but it’s nice also to have a bit of say-so, I think.”
In spite of some passé elements that jar with modern audiences, The Spy Who Loved Me still stands the test of time. Munro says: “Looking back, it works so well because Roger was charisma in a bucket. Also, the plot is still very relevant. The clothes might have dated, but the 1970s are coming back with young people now. Maybe we’ll be cool again!”
In addition, the film still has an enormous following amongst Bond aficionados. At conventions, fans love coming up to Munro – whose character was the only ever woman killed by Moore’s 007 – and exclaiming, “you survived!”
Sadly for Munro, one person very important to her was deeply unimpressed by the film. The actress takes up the story. “My then five-year-old daughter and I sat down to watch it with popcorn on the telly in our sitting room. She was so excited.
“I said to her, ‘you might like it, you’ll see Mummy in a minute.’ Then Mummy came on, and my daughter burst into tears. She said, ‘I hate James Bond! He killed Mummy!’”
For all that, Munro relished working on the movie. “I loved Roger. He couldn't have been nicer or more charming. He was very modest, funny and giving of himself to make the film work.” Also, “his knitwear was classic!”
The daughter of a solicitor, Munro was born in Windsor. An only child, she attended convent school in Brighton before winning The Evening News’ “Face of the Year” competition judged by photographer David Bailey in 1966. At the age of just 17, she became a model for Vogue.
In 1967, she had a brief career as a pop star, releasing the single “Tar and Cement” with the astonishing backing band of Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce (better known as the supergroup Cream).
After roles in Casino Royale in 1967, with Peter Sellers, and 1969’s A Talent For Loving, in which she played Richard Widmark’s daughter, Munro got her big break as the face of Lamb’s Navy Rum. She smouldered in various items of swimwear for the next 12 years.
The high-profile advertising campaign – which saw her poster adorn the bedroom wall of every teenage boy in the country – helped her land her next role.
Munro, whose husband George Dugdale, her director in the felicitously named 1986 slasher movie Slaughter High, died last year, recalls: “It had a great effect on my career and was very famous at the time. For their first poster campaign, Lamb’s Navy Rum used a burly man with a big beard and a tattoo. I don’t think sales went too well, so they thought, ‘let’s try a woman.’
“I don’t know if I transformed the fortunes of Lamb’s Navy Rum, but it did quite well after my campaign began. My granny certainly loved it because we got a bottle of rum at the end of every shoot which she put into her trifle at Christmas. I don’t know if she ever saw the campaign, though!”
One person who did see the campaign, though, was Sir James Carreras, the Hammer Films chairman. Munro says: “He lived in Brighton. As he was travelling up and down to London on the train, he noticed there were great big billboards everywhere with me looking rather tough in a wetsuit with a knife strapped to my thigh having been dragged out of the water. Sir James said he’d like to meet me, and on the spot he offered me a contract.”
The actress, who was the subject of a 2004 documentary with the marvellous title of The First Lady of Fantasy, went on to star in two Hammer movies, Dracula A.D. (1972) and Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (1974). She was the only performer ever to be offered a long-term contract by Hammer. “That’s what I heard, which was very surprising to me. I suppose it was because it was at the end of Hammer’s reign. Maybe they didn’t know it was heading towards the end. I hope I didn’t finish them off!”
In a celebrated scene from Dracula A.D., Christopher Lee’s vampire sank his elongated incisors into her character’s neck. “I was very nervous, but he was extraordinary,” Munro recollects. “He was so professional and so calm. I didn’t have to do a lot of acting – it was all about reacting to Christopher.
I feel thrilled that people actually bothered to go and see the films, that they put their bums on the seat to watch a bit of my work
“Being bitten by Dracula was rather good actually! Beforehand, Christopher and I sat around onset having a cup of tea. We chatted away while I knitted. But when he came out in his garb as Dracula with that look, those eyes, those teeth and that cape, I thought, ‘wow!’ I was a believer.”
The actress, who retains the natural beauty and lustrous dark hair of a woman 20 years younger, adds: “My character, Laura Bellows, was very aptly named because I spent a lot of time on Dracula A.D. just screaming! But that film was a turning point in my career. I suddenly realised, ‘I really like acting. It’s something I like to pursue.’”
Many of her roles played on Munro’s obvious sex appeal. Did that ever bother her? “Not particularly. I think the work I did on Bond and Lamb’s Navy Rum was fabulous. I didn’t see anything bad or derogatory in it. I look back on the work now and think, ‘I’m very glad I did that’. I never felt exploited at all.”
Munro also clearly had a steely side. She was nobody’s fool and rejected leading roles in Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974), Force 10 From Navarone (1978) and The World Is Full of Married Men (1979) because they demanded that her character strip off. “I kept my stuff on. If I didn’t want to do something, I didn’t do it.”
Pondering the movies she turned down because they required nudity, Munro says now: “I didn’t think those scenes were particularly necessary. They didn’t add anything to my character. I think mystery is always a lot more exciting. Alfred Hitchcock said that what you don’t see is more exciting than what you do see. It’s all in a person’s imagination. That’s much more thrilling because when you do see it, you think, ‘oh dear!’”
After being blown up by James Bond in a helicopter in 1977, Munro kept busy with an eclectic range of projects. For instance, she starred as the wonderfully named Stella Star opposite David Hasselhoff and Richard Chamberlain in the 1978 sci-fi film, Starcrash.
In the early 1980s, she appeared in music videos for Adam Ant's “Goody Two Shoes” and Meat Loaf’s “If You Really Want To”. In 1984, she worked with Gary Numan on a single entitled “Pump Me Up”, which was big in Italy. She also co-presented the ITV game show 3-2-1 from 1984 to 1987.
Now Munro has got a great gig hosting The Cellar Club for Talking Pictures TV, the popular, independent movie channel run on a shoestring by the father-daughter team of Noel Cronin and Sarah Cronin-Stanley out of a garden shed in Hertfordshire. Screening long-lost movies, it has been a godsend during the pandemic, attracting up to 6 million viewers. The BBC recently called it “a reminder of a lost world, and for many a lockdown friend”.
Munro brings her inside knowledge of the world of horror to the job of presenting The Cellar Club. She signs off the trailer every week with a delightfully flirty “don’t be late!” She says: “I’m so lucky that I get to see some of the magic of these films. A lot of them were made before I was even born.”
Before she goes, Munro takes a moment to reflect on her extraordinary and wide-ranging career. “I feel thrilled that people actually bothered to go and see the films, that they put their bums on the seat to watch a bit of my work, that I’ve entertained a few people. I’m proud of that.”
Above all, Munro takes great pride in still being described as a Bond Girl. “Being a Bond Girl is a job for life. I’ll always be part of that. Even if I get to 110, I’ll still be a Bond Girl. How lovely is that!”
‘The Cellar Club’, presented by Caroline Munro, runs every Friday from 9pm on Talking Pictures TV. The movies this Friday are ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ and ‘A Bucket of Blood’.
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