Honor Blackman (Goldfinger, 1964): Already established at the time in TV and movies, the British actress left the hit BBC series The Avengers to play one of the most famous Bond girls of all time—the female accomplice of the villainous Goldfinger, with a saucy name so spicy (Pussy Galore) U.S. censors almost cut it from the film. She’d later appear in many other film and TV projects, including Columbo, Doctor Who and Bridget Jones’s Diary. She died in 2020 at age 94. Jill St. John (Diamonds Are Forever, 1971): She was a 1960s sex symbol when she was cast as Tiffany Case (get it?). Later, the actress, now 81, popped up in Fantasy Island, Vega$ and Hart to Hart, which starred her then-future husband, RobertWagner, to whom she’s now been married for 31 years. Jane Seymour (Live and Let Die, 1973): So what if her Bond character, the demure voodoo psychic Solitaire, wasn’t the most dynamic character? The lovely British actress, 70, is now a film and television mainstay, most notably in the 1990s drama Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Britt Ekland (The Man With the Golden Gun, 1974): A movie sensation by the time she appeared alongside RogerMoore as the inexperienced MI6 agent Mary Goodnight, the Swedish actress, 78, went on to other film and television projects, including the TV’s Superboy, The Real Marigold Hotel and Absolutely Fabulous. Barbara Bach (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977): Her Anya Amasova (i.e., Agent XXX)—on a mission to find out who’s stealing submarines—was probably the most self-sufficient Bond Girl ever. The former New York City–born model, 74, has been married to rock icon RingoStarr since 1981. Kim Basinger (Never Say Never Again, 1983): Though not an official Bond movie (it was made outside the franchise’s studio system), let’s still give it credit. After all, that’s Sean Connery in the starring role, and Basinger, as Domino Petachi, is the only future Oscar winner on this list. (The star, 67, won it in 1998 for playing a siren in L.A. Confidential.) Carey Lowell (License to Kill, 1989): Of all the attorneys who filed through New York City courtrooms in TV’s Law & Order, only one could stake the claim of once holding her own in a fight in a Bond film. That honor goes to Lowell, 60, who played ex-military pilot Pam Bouvier. Michelle Yeoh (Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997): The first ethnic Chinese Bond girl, Yeoh’s Wai Lin is a spy for the People’s Republic of China who later learns that she and Bond (Pierce Brosnan) are on the same side—trying to stop an evil media mogul who wants to start an international war. Yeoh, 59, would star post-Bond in the martial-arts classic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha, Crazy Rich Asians, Last Christmas, the recent Gunpowder Milkshake, and in the TV series Star Trek: Discovery. Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day, 2002): Working undercover as a spy, her MI6 agent Miranda Frost was the first British Bond traitor ever. (How fitting that Pike, 42, later earned an Oscar nomination for playing the duplicitous titular character in 2014’s Gone Girl.) Halle Berry, 55, also appeared in the film, as rogue NSA agent Giacinta “Jinx” Johnson, drawing raves as one of the top females of the franchise. Eva Green (Casino Royale, 2006): The French actress received a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Rising Star Award for her role as the mysterious, ill-fated Vesper Lynd, who captures Bond’s heart above and beyond many of the franchise’s other female fatales. Green, 41, would later star in films including 300: Rise of an Empire, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and Dumbo and in the Showtime series Penny Dreadful.
