I’m proud to be first conquest

MADELINE SMITH: Live And Let Die (Miss Caruso) 1973

I’M HONOURED to have been Roger’s first Bond girl – and his first conquest. We filmed for three days in our underwear during a particularly cold January and he spent much of the time making me laugh.

I played an Italian villainess who was pushed out of his bed and into a cupboard when Miss Moneypenny knocked on his door. But I can reveal there was another man involved. When Roger used a ‘magnetic watch’ to pull down the zip at the back of my dress, it was actually a special-effects guy crouched between my legs with a tiny wire attached to the zip.

Roger joked that it was an awkward threesome. He had a lightness of touch in his acting and his dealing with people that immediately put one at ease. There was no ego or vanity about him.

Although my part lasted for only a few minutes before the opening credits, it was the role that defined me as an actress, and I have Roger to thank for that. It was his suggestion that I should be offered the role without an audition or even meeting the director – though I only found this out years later. I had appeared with him in the TV series The Persuaders and we’d hit it off straight away.

We remained great friends and I am close to his lovely daughter Deborah. The family told me a week before that he was dying but he kept it quiet because he didn’t want to create a huge fuss. That’s the sort of man he was.