Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: The 5 Best Bond Girls

Features

by Oliver Lyttelton
November 9, 2012 12:37 PM
12 Comments

Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet) - "For Your Eyes Only"
While decidedly not a great Bond film, 1981's "For Your Eyes Only" did at least mark a return to more earthbound antics after the creatively disastrous (but hugely successful) "Moonraker," even if it is a fairly awkward mix of Moore-era camp and something harder-edged (including the somewhat controversial moment when Bond spitefully kicks a car off a cliff). But it did at least feature by some distance the most interesting Bond girl of this era, in the shape of Carole Bouquet's Melina Havelock. In a film positively overrun with potential love interests, including ice skater Lynn-Holly Johnson and Cassandra Harris as Topol's mistress (the latter was married to Pierce Brosnan at the time, though passed away from cancer before her husband took on the role), Havelock isn't particularly concerned with romance. The daughter of friends of M's who've been murdered by a Cuban hitman, she's now a crossbow-wielding angel of vengeance, out to find the person who ordered her father's death, who turns out to be smuggler Aristotle Kristatos (Julian Glover). Fiery, tough and just as deadly as Bond without the training, she's one of all too few allowed their own character and objectives rather than just standing around in the background. The script sells her up the river by the end with a deeply unconvincing love scene with the twice-her-age Moore, but she still makes a serious impression before that.

Colonel Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) - "Tomorrow Never Dies"
Though it dosen't match its predecessor "GoldenEye," "Tomorrow Never Dies" is still the second-best Brosnan entry in the series, thanks to a handful of cracking action sequences (the remote-control car chase is one for the ages), and the ludicrous scenery-chewing of Jonathan Pryce's Rupert Murdoch surrogate villain. And this period isn't a golden one for Bond girls (bar Famke Janssen in "GoldenEye," who landed on our villains list), with Denise Richards' Dr. Christmas Jones, the least convincing nuclear physicist in cinema history, marking something of a nadir. But, "Tomorrow Never Dies" does also feature the pick of the crop in the shape of Michelle Yeoh. A major star in Hong Kong cinema thanks to the Jackie Chan vehicle "Police Story 3: Supercop" and subsequent films, and would soon star in the acclaimed "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," Yeoh made her English-language debut in the film as Chinese People's External Security Force spy Wai Lin. Initially undercover as a reporter, she and Bond soon see through each other's cover and are forced into an easy alliance. The script, to its credit, doesn't have Lin come to see the benefits of Western life or anything ridiculous like that; she's a professional, doing her job extremely well, and more than almost any other Bond girl, she's a skilled female counterpart to 007 (certainly more convincing than Halle Berry's take on a similar character in "Die Another Day"). Yeoh excels at the fight sequences, as you might expect, but also delivers a fairly impressive performance given it's her first time in an English role. The character proved popular enough that MGM flirted with the idea of a spin-off franchise focusing on her character, and the original script for "Die Another Day" would have seen her character return, but Yeoh ultimately declined in order to shoot her own vehicle "The Touch."

Eva Green - "Casino Royale"
It's easy to forget that Eva Green's Vesper Lynd doesn't make an appearance until almost an hour into 2006's "Casino Royale," such is the long shadow she casts on the memory of the film (and, to a degree, its follow up, "Quantum of Solace"). Having seduced the ill-fated wife of an associate of villainous financier Le Chiffre in the Bahamas and thwarted a terrorist attempting to blow up a prototype plane at Miami airport, Bond is sent to Montenegro, and on the train, meets Lynd, a treasury agent who's there to make sure he doesn't lose the £10 million stake Bond's been given to bankrupt Le Chiffre. Unlike most modern Bond girls, she's not going to be his match in the action stakes (though refreshingly, she saves his life when he's poisoned), but it's clear from that excellent initial train introduction that she runs rings around him intellectually, and you can sense Daniel Craig's Bond being almost immediately disarmed by her. By the time their mission has been completed, the couple are in love and flee to Venice, only for Bond to realize she's been playing him; her boyfriend was kidnapped by the organization who've been pulling the strings all along, and she's been assisting them in exchange for his safety. It's an intriguing twist (if a little muddled), with Bond giving his heart to someone only to be deeply betrayed, and it all helps to make Lynd a far more complex and interesting female lead than they usually are in Bond films. It helps that Green (who broke out a few years earlier in Bernando Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" and beat out Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Audrey Tautou and Cecile De France for the part) is terrific in the role, pulling off an impressive English accent on top of being smart as a whip, vulnerable and sexy as all hell. Her death (like Tracy Bond before her) has hung heavy over the subsequent Craig-starring films, and she's likely the seminal female character of the contemporary era of 007.

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12 Comments

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MJ | November 12, 2012 11:05 PMReply

Good picks, but Olga Kurylenko in Quantum of Solace deserves consideration for being practically the only Bond girl to have an actual character/story. But perhaps she isn't eligible for not being seduced by Bond.
okrim37 | November 12, 2012 1:05 PMReply

Beautiful Ornella Muti was the first choice for Melina, anyway it's true that Bouquet was fantastic in the role, however in my top 5 I would have put Sophie Marceau in Bouquet's spot

Green, Marceau, Auger, Bouquet, Clery and now Berenice Marlohe...the french bond girls are really fab!
Cyrus | November 10, 2012 11:26 PMReply

I'm sorry, but no Pussy Galore?
Eva Green | November 10, 2012 12:23 AMReply

Eva has great tits too.
James | November 9, 2012 11:15 PMReply

Great choices! I really liked Olga Kurylenko's character Camille in Quantum of Solace. I thought she was a badass.
Cate | November 9, 2012 4:07 PMReply

Honourable mention to Natalya Simonova? She was just a badass.
kill | November 9, 2012 2:14 PMReply

Great choices but I would also put Sophie Marceau ! I mean she is literally the reason why french actresses are always cast as psychotic femme fatal/
Lou | November 9, 2012 1:45 PMReply

Good choice.
Brad | November 9, 2012 1:28 PMReply

Perhaps I am reading it wrong, but having watched Casino Royale just the other night, I do not recall Bond sleeping with the wife of Le Chiffre. He did however sleep with the wife of Alex Dimitrios.
Windfall | November 9, 2012 1:00 PMReply

I'm pretty much agree with this, but Green didn't beat out Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron, they turned down the part.
Newson | November 14, 2012 8:42 AM

Nope, was never offered to either of them. They were considered, but they offered it to Eva Green instead. Green is the only person that was offered the role.
Duddi | November 9, 2012 12:50 PMReply

I only agree on your picks of Ursula ANDRESS and Eva GREEN -" the rest are not the best" - ;) definitely.