Wednesday, Nov. 06, 2002

Bond Just Wants to Have Fun

By JEFF CHU

Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2002
Ursula Andress is phlegmy, sniffly and all stuffed up. The very first Bond Girl is not feeling particularly glamorous or sexy at all — but then she never did. "I still can't believe how people said I looked incredible," she says of Honey Ryder's famous emergence from the sea in 1962's Dr. No. "I was just standing there, being myself."

Andress being herself actually almost kept her from taking the part. In the early 1960s, she was living in Hollywood. "I talked about working a lot, but I never did anything," she recalls. "I was not too eager to go to work." The Swiss-born beauty had the looks, certainly, but she did not have the self-confidence. "I didn't have experience or education. I was scared," she says.

One day, a script arrived from a couple of producers who were trying to bring a spy story by British writer Ian Fleming to the big screen. Characteristically, Andress did not read it. But Kirk Douglas, who had dropped by for a visit one day, did pick the script up. "He was sitting in my house, reading the part, and said, 'Do it! Do it! It's a fun film!" Andress says. She wasn't convinced, but friends told her it would be easy, and she decided "it wasn't something I had to be great in. I thought it would be a little English action film and nobody would see it."

Even after she signed on, nothing about the experience suggested that her prediction would be proved wrong. The budget — under a million dollars — wasn't big. Her paycheck — about $10,000 — wasn't either. Sure, the Jamaican setting was beautiful, and the cast did lunch with Noel Coward and Fleming himself, who had written the first Bond novel at his Jamaican home. But the experience was pretty low-key overall. Andress even made her famous white bikini herself, with the help of her friend Tessa. "It was funny, very much do-it-yourself," says Andress. "I just couldn't find anything else I liked."

Nor was the actual filming particularly memorable. The beach, near Ocho Rios, was beautiful, but she didn't have to do much. "It was a warm and nice day. I was just standing there, singing this song [Underneath the Mango Tree], then running, running, running," she recalls. "Nobody ever said, 'You look marvelous! You were wonderful!' We just finished filming."

And then the acclaim — admittedly not for her thespian skills — came flooding in. Andress says she has tried to watch and see what all the fuss was about. "I wanted to see this magic impression," she says, "but I can't." She is even more amazed at the endurance of James Bond as a popular figure. "People love you and leave you these days. They are very unfaithful to anything," she says. "Is anybody else in the world so cared for? Jesus Christ, maybe." Her own allegiance is to the Bond of old, and the films from the 1960s are the ones she likes best. "The new ones are like video games — every other second is special effects and explosions."

Her friendship with Sean Connery, who played Bond in Dr. No, has endured, too: "Every time we talk, he says, 'Where is my Swiss kiss? Ursula, give me a Swiss kiss,'" she says. "It's lovely to know an actor who is still the same person after 40 years."

Bond the character has moved on also, and Andress knows that the Bond Girl she played was of that moment, not this one. She jokes that today's Bond is "very busy" solving world crises and that "he wouldn't have time for me." But she believes he's still the same at heart, which is why she and millions of other fans still love him. "He's a fantasy who knows about all the good things — food, language, people, culture. He has a twinkle in his eye and a cocktail of everything — but without the vulgarity," she says. We love him because "James Bond is just fun."