From rum ad to Hammer Horror star & Bond Girl ..and still in demand 50 years on
Actress survives her own nightmare times
girl in a Spanish spaghetti western, A Talent for Loving, starring Richard Widmark and Cesar Romero. And then came the job that changed her life.
As Caroline recalls: “I was approached to do the Lamb’s
Navy Rum ad campaign.”
Suddenly, she was on billboards all over London, in a wetsuit zipped perilously low, brandishing a knife. She says: “I looked very tough. It was quite an empowering image. It was a bit of a shock for my dad, though. He worked in the City as a solicitor and he got off the train at Waterloo one morning to see this massive poster. I imagine there was a bit of office banter about that.”
Among the millions who saw that poster were James Carreras, chairman of Hammer Films, and Cubby Broccoli, the 007 film franchise legend.
She was cast in Dracula A.D. 1972 and later starred in The Spy Who Loved Me with Roger Moore and Barbara Bach, springboarding her to a career that has really never stopped.
She shot her most recent film, the low-budget horror The Haunting of Margam Castle, in 2020.
She says: “I never had ambitions to be an actress. I never even had ambitions to be a model. I think my mum thought a nice career for me would have been a window dresser in a shop.”
Caroline, also a hostess on game show 3-2-1 with Ted Rogers and Lynda Lee Lewis in the 1980s, appears every Friday night on Talking Pictures TV, introducing old horror movies, and in July will appear at Christchurch, Dorset, as part of a weekend of Talking Pictures-organised events.
Although she loves visiting the US, she was never tempted to live there.
She says: “I had the chance to go, and Cubby thought I would do very well in America. But I had my parents here, I had my life here and doing a lot of work in Europe.
“I had to follow my heart and I said no. Hollywood wasn’t for me.”
■ Caroline Munro is at A Weekend By The Sea with Talking Pictures TV in Christchurch, Dorset, July 16-17. renownfilms.co.uk. Her next Q The Music show is at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London, on October 23. Go to qthemusicshow.com/seetheshow