Bond girl

The love interests, allies and adversaries who define each Bond adventure.

Bond girl is the term for a female character who is James Bond's love interest, ally or adversary in a novel, film or video game of the franchise.

Quick Facts

First bond girl: Honey Ryder

Facts from the source article.

Background

Lisa Funnell, editor of several books on the series, calls the Bond girl a staple of the franchise and a powerful contributor to its worldwide success, while arguing the term is overused, since it gets applied to nearly every woman in a Bond film; some recent actresses prefer "Bond woman". Ben Macintyre of The Times has suggested that Ian Fleming's lover Muriel Wright, a wealthy model, skier and polo player who died in 1944, inspired his female characters.

Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder in Dr No (1962) is widely treated as the first Bond girl, though Eunice Gayson as Sylvia Trench and Zena Marshall as Miss Taro appear earlier in the same film, and Goldfinger (1964) made the Bond girl a regular fixture. There is no set rule about who she is: she may be ally or enemy, pivotal to the mission or present for her beauty alone. Judi Dench's M, Camille Montes in Quantum of Solace and Bibi Dahl in For Your Eyes Only are not romantic interests and so may not count.

Roald Dahl said that when writing You Only Live Twice he was told to use three Bond girls: one who dies early, preferably in Bond's arms, a villainess Bond seduces who dies gruesomely midway, and one who survives to the end. Several are revealed as villainesses after their tryst with Bond, among them Fatima Blush, Elektra King and Miranda Frost, and the Timothy Dalton films introduced the "Bond woman" who is equal to and challenges Bond.

As of 2013 only two films show Bond falling in love: On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where Tracy di Vicenzo marries him and is shot dead by Irma Bunt and Blofeld, and Casino Royale (2006), where Vesper Lynd, blackmailed by Quantum, dies by drowning in a lift in Venice. The role can boost an unestablished actress's career, as Teri Hatcher and Jane Seymour found, though Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman were already stars from The Avengers, and since Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli took over producing, Kim Basinger, Halle Berry, Rosamund Pike and Michelle Yeoh have all won or been nominated for an Oscar.