London - Britt Ekland’s bikini-clad turn in The Man With The Golden Gun remains a firm favourite with 007 fans almost 40 years after the film’s premiere.
And now, the Swedish-born actress has revealed how she achieved her eye-catching look – by eating huge portions of spaghetti on set.
Bond producer Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli insisted the then 32-year-old went on a pasta diet after he realised that her curvaceous figure in The Wicker Man, filmed the year before in 1973, was due to the fact that she was pregnant at the time.
Ekland, now 69, said: “Cubby had seen The Wicker Man and of course I was pregnant in that film and quite voluptuous. When I met him, I had just given birth and had slimmed down quite a lot, and he was a little surprised, shall we say.
“He hadn’t realised I had been pregnant and I was not what he expected to find. All during the filming, he just forced me to eat mega, mega loads of spaghetti.”
In The Man With The Golden Gun, Ekland played love-struck MI6 operative Mary Goodnight, who finally manages to lure Roger Moore’s 007 into bed at the end of the film.
At the time of the film’s release, critics and fans dismissed Goodnight as a ‘stupid’ character.
In one scene, Bond forces her to hide in a wardrobe so he can make love to the film’s other female protagonist, played by Maud Adams, while in another, she is inadvertently locked in a car boot. But Ekland, who is due to take part in celebrations to mark this year’s 50th anniversary of the Bond film franchise, said she preferred to regard her character as ‘ditzy’ rather than dumb.
She also questioned the decision of the heroines of the new Bond adventure Skyfall to call themselves ‘Bond women’.
“I am always a Bond girl. The idea of a Bond woman – no, no, no, that is absolutely, completely wrong.” - Mail On Sunday