London - She was 007’s quintessential scantily-clad love interest in 'The Man With The Golden Gun'.
But nearly 50 years on, Britt Ekland says Bond girls in bikinis are "dead".
The 77-year-old, who played Mary Goodnight opposite Roger Moore in the 1974 movie, says political correctness has changed the role.
It means bikini-clad Bond girls "no longer exist", she said.
undefined"I’m the proudest Bond girl there is because there are not a lot of us left, and there won’t be any in future," the Swedish actress told The Guardian.
"The Bond girl has to look good in a bikini: that was her role... the Bond girl of my era exists no more because they’re not presented that way. You wouldn’t see her in a bikini next to Daniel Craig in a suit today."
Ekland, who also starred in 'The Wicker Man' and 'Get Carter', claimed recently that "it’s over" for women after they hit 50 as it’s still very much "a man’s world" despite the MeToo movement showing "that things can change and we must never stop trying".
She has also insisted that because of the trend for plastic surgery "there are no beautiful women left in Hollywood".
Ekland told The Guardian how Peter Sellers, to whom she was married from 1964 to 1968, took her to see 'The Pink Panther' – in which he starred as Inspector Clouseau – on one of their first dates. She "didn’t have a clue" about his career and when the comedy actor realised, he took her to see the movie.
Sellers told the world they were getting married before he proposed to her. "He said, 'I’ve told the ppress we’re getting married. Is that okay with you?", the actress said.
"I didn’t know what to say. Even to this day, I don’t know what I said."
Ekland also revealed how Playboy boss Hugh Hefner tried to get Sellers, a keen photographer, to send him nude snaps of her by claiming he already had saucy shots of the actress.
She knew that Hefner was bluffing but Sellers did not believe she had not posed naked for him.
"It was just horrifying that he (Sellers) should accuse me of something that was so very far from who I was," she said.