20 Bond Girls Behind the Scenes Photos Through the Decades Since Dr. No

Though she was preceded onscreen by Sylvia Trench and Miss Taro, Honey Ryder, a Jamaican shell diver played by a dubbed Ursula Andress, is widely considered the first Bond girl.

Perhaps it’s because of her unforgettable entrance in Dr. No, emerging from the ocean in a white bikini and belt, bearing shells.

Her chemistry with Bond is one of the driving forces in Dr. No, the film that spawned one of the most successful and longest-running of all film franchises.

The first Bond sequel found Bond traveling to Turkey to help Soviet consulate clerk Tatiana Romanova — played by Daniela Bianchi, with Connery above.

Of course, this being a Bond movie, sparks fly. But Tatiana is, of course, a pawn in a plan by SPECTRE to enact vengeance against Bond for some things that happened in Dr. No. But the pawn soon becomes the key player in the film.

She was Miss Universo Italia and first runner up at Miss Universe 1960 before becoming one of the most famous Bond girls. And in 1967, she appeared opposite Connery’s brother, Neil Connery, in Operation Kid Brother, a Bond spoof.  

Honor Blackman, rehearsing an infamous fight scene with Sean Connery, above, has perhaps the most famous name of any of the Bond girls — and we’re not even sure we can print it here given the cautious sensibilities of some of our syndication partners.

Suffice it to say that Blackman, who was also known for the TV series The Avengers, is one of the most iconic Bond girls of all — a woman who could very much hold her own against Bond, or anybody.

Shirley Eaton played Jill Masterson, aide to the villain who gives Goldfinger its title. When she spends a night with Bond, he enacts a cruel but colorful vengeance: Having her killed via “skin suffocation” from being painted gold.

The image was iconic enough to land Eaton on the cover of LIFE magazine for its November 6, 1964 issue.

If you’re wondering, it took about 90 minutes to apply all that gold paint. The task fell to makeup artist Paul Rabiger, who also worked on the Bond movies Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and From Russia With Love.

Claudine Auger earned the titles of Miss France Monde 1958 and became first runner up in the 1958 Miss World compeition before landing the role of Dominique “Domino” Derval in Thunderball, the fourth Bond film.

Her chemistry with Sean Connery, onscreen and behind the scenes, should be obvious.

She later starred in the 1966 World War II drama Triple Cross, and, in 1968, appeared with fellow Bond girl Ursula Andress in the Italian comedy Anyone Can Play.

Luciana Paluzzi as SPECTRE agent Fiona Volpe helped create the template for the Bond femme fatale. She’s one of the fiercest early Bond girls.

Her later roles included playing as a Southern belle in the 1974 film The Klansman — with her voice dubbed — for Thunderball director Terence Young.

Diana Rigg (left) is the first of the Bond girls to be arguably more famous than her co-star: She had already the lead of The Avengers when she was cast as new Bond George Lazenby’s partner in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Lazenby, an Australian model, played Bond just once before Connery returned for Diamonds Are Forever.

Rigg also holds the distinction of being the only woman to marry Bond — though, horribly, she was murdered moments after their wedding, making On Her Majesty’s Secret Service perhaps the biggest bummer of all Bond movies.

Still, Rigg did very well — her many post-Bond roles included playing  Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones. And she played a crucial part in Edgar Wright’s 2021 Last Night in Soho, which was completed just before her death.

Live and Let Die, the first film to feature Roger Moore as Bond, was produced at the height of the Blaxploitation trend and has several attempts at nods to Black culture, including the casting of Gloria Hendry as Rosie Carver, who is the first Black woman to be romantically entwined with 007 onscreen.

One could argue that Jane Seymour’s Solitaire is the most prominent of the movie’s Bond girls, but we don’t have a picture of Jane Seymour posing behind the scenes by a pinball machine in one of the most gloriously 1970s images ever, so.

Oh wait, we may have found a more 1970s image. We hope you’ll forgive us for the fact that not one but two Bond girls are in this photo. Maud Adams, left, played Andrea Anders in The Man With the Golden Gun, and returned to play the title character in a 1983 Bond film we don’t think we can name here for reasons previously mentioned.

Meanwhile, Britt Ekland, right, played Mary Goodnight. Mary as been derided for being kind of clumsy as Bond girls go — but also praised as one of the most fashionable. Don’t blame Ekland for the writing. Director Guy Hamilton has said in audio commentary for the film that she was so “elegant and beautiful that it seemed to me she was the perfect Bond girl.”

And yes, that’s Fantasy Island star Hervé Villechaize, who also starred in the film, hanging out with Moore, Adams and Ekland.

Perhaps reflecting the advances of the women’s liberation movement, Soviet spy Major Anya Amasova is one of the most coolly capable of all the women in Bond movies — though even she needs an assist against the hulking Jaws (Richard Kiel).

Almost to the final seconds of The Spy Who Loved Me, we don’t know if Amasova loves Bond or wants to kill him or both.

In the last of the Roger Moore Bond movies, Tonya Roberts (right) — best known at the time for Charlie’s Angels — plays the heiress of an oil company who tries to fend off the advances of the evil Max Zorin (Christopher Walken).

But the coolest character in the movie is May Day, Zorin’s lover and chief assassin, played by Grace Jones (left). She’s one of the most memorable of all Bond characters, and even kind of gets to die a hero.

Timothy Dalton became the new James Bond in the late ’80s, when fears of HIV/AIDS were very prevalent and an effort was made to tone down 007’s promiscuity. That meant fewer, but more memorable, female counterparts, including the charismatic Carey Lowell as pilot and DEA informant Pam Bouvier, who helps James battle a drug lord. (Why was Bond messing with cocaine kingpins instead of mad scientists? It was the ’80s.)

Lowell went on to be known for playing smart and capable characters in many other roles, including as Jamie Ross in Law & Order.

Tomorrow Never Dies is most noteworthy for being the movie that introduced Malaysian action star Michelle Yeoh to Western audiences, a quarter-century before she won Best Actress for her role in 2022’s Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Yeoh plays Wai Lin, a supremely capable Chinese agent.

She may be best known for reality TV today, but Denise Richards had two excellent back-to-back appearances in Starship Trooper (1997) and Wild Things (1988) before joining the Bond franchise to play an oddly named nuclear physicist.

She holds her own against terrific 007 Pierce Brosnan, but her name seems like a setup for the worst line ever to appear in a Bond movie: “I thought Christmas only comes once a year.” Blech.

Halle Berry is another Bond girl who at least matched her Bond co-star in stardom: At the time of the film’s release, she had just won a Best Actress Oscar for 2001’s Monsters Ball.

It was the final Pierce Brosnan movie, but Berry basically hijacked it with her sheer watchability, and not just by paying homage to Ursula Andress’ entrance in Dr. No.

Vesper Lynd is widely recognized as one of the greatest of all Bond girls, if not the greatest: She breaks the heart of Daniel Craig’s Bond in this film, and he never quite recovers.

Besides being the most glamorous British Treasury agent of all, Lynd is a smooth operator who keeps everyone guessing until the very end — especially Bond.

Ana de Armas isn’t in No Time to Die for very long — just long enough to steal the whole movie.

Dressed in evening wear, her Cuban secret agent shoots it out with Bond in a Havana fight scene that is one of the best set pieces in any Bond film.

Can she be the next 007?

Léa Seydoux is a standout among Bond girls — or Bond women, as we should probably call them in the modern age. Her character is the only woman to be the female lead in two Bond films, and the only woman known to have a child with him.

Besides On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, No Time to Die is the biggest bummer among Bond films. But Swann and her daughter, Mathilde, provides glimmers of light.

You might also enjoy these behind the scenes images of Dr. No or these behind the scenes images of Goldfinger.

Main image: Denise Richards as Dr. Christmas Jones in The World Is Not Enough. United Artists.

Editor’s Note: Corrects Domino’s name and headline.