My Bond role’s made me feel like a real woman
PLAYING the latest Bond girl is her most high-profile role to date. But actress Ana de Armas has admitted she found the female characters of the 007 franchise ‘unrelatable’ – until now.
The 31-year- old insists her part in No Time To Die is a ‘real woman’.
Said she was excited to be cast as CIA agent Paloma, but wanted her role in the new James Bond film to fit in with her portfolio of work.
Miss de Armas, whose breakthrough role was in Blade Runner 2049 three years ago, was reassured when she read the No Time To Die script, co-written by Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, because her character felt like a ‘real woman’.
The Cuban-Spanish actress told Vanity Fair magazine: ‘Obviously I was jumping all over the place and very excited.
‘But I needed to be sure it wouldn’t jeopardise all the work I’d been putting in, that it wouldn’t ruin everything.
‘And the Bond women have always been, for me at least, unrelatable.
‘You could also tell that Phoebe was in there. There was that humour and spikiness so specific to her. My character feels like a real woman.
‘But you know, we can evolve and grow and incorporate reality, but Bond is a fantasy. In the end you can’t take things out of where they live.’
No Time To Die, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, is expected to feature a more ‘emotional’ plot which sees notorious womaniser Bond in a loving relationship.
Daniel Craig, who makes his swansong as 007, previously praised Miss WallerBridge’s script – and also rejected the term ‘Bond girl’.
‘I don’t even call them Bond girls,’ he told Vanity Fair. ‘I’m not going to deny it to anybody else. It’s just I can’t have a sensible conversation with somebody if we’re talking about “Bond girls”.’ The film also stars Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes, Lea Seydoux and Ben Whishaw.