‘Nubile Nadja’ tired of decorative film roles, becoming a publisher and novelist
Nadja Regin, who has died aged 87, had the requisite allure to be a ‘‘Bond girl’’, but might have made an equally good spy. The Yugoslavianborn actress, who appeared in two of 007’s early outings, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, was a graduate of philosophy and philology, spoke five languages and went on to write novels.
To Regin’s disappointment, she was never required to do much more on screen than look sexy. In the first action sequence of the 1964 film Goldfinger she appears as Bonita, a dancer at the El Scorpio nightclub in Mexico. After Bond has found her in the bath of her apartment, the inevitable steamy clinch ensues, until he notices an assailant in the reflection of her bright brown eyes and realises he has fallen into a ‘‘honeytrap’’. In an ungallant moment of quick thinking, Bond swings Bonita round and she takes the blow.
Regin was ‘‘embarrassed’’ by the attention she received for such cameos, but admitted enjoying being photographed for promotional shots, and was just about able to bear kissing Sean Connery.
Having appeared in numerous films and TV dramas, including The Avengers and The Saint, however, Regin longed for more substantial roles. Even quite serious profiles would start with descriptions of ‘‘Nubile Nadja’’. She carried on accepting the parts she was offered, but appearing in a basque on The Benny Hill Show might have been the final straw. ‘‘When I began, I believed that one day a good part would come along, but it never did,’’ she lamented.
In despair, she wrote to James Carreras, the owner of Hammer Films, offering her services as a script editor. To her surprise, he accepted. She would read some 300 scripts a year, proudly adding that she never had a nightmare.
Carreras’ decisions on whether to make a film would often hinge on her advice. Regin told the News of the World in 1971: ‘‘You’ve no idea what a thrill it is to find a writer who can turn out beautiful horror.’’ She had suffered enough horror in her childhood to put such scripts into perspective.
Nadezda Poderegin, known as Nadja, was born in 1931 in Nis in what was then Yugoslavia and is now Serbia, and grew up in the city of Kraljevo. When partisans attempted to retake it after its occupation by the Nazis in 1941, the Germans quickly reasserted control and decided to kill 5000 Serbs in reprisal for 50 dead Germans. Nadja’s father, Ignjatije, a scientist and university lecturer, was among those rounded up for execution. When someone spoke up to explain that he was actually Russian and should therefore be spared, Ignjatije insisted on remaining with his friends.
Nadja, then 9, and her elder sister, Jelena,
were brought up by their mother, Milka, who actively supported the resistance. When the Russians liberated Yugoslavia in the autumn of 1944, Nadja, who had picked up Russian from her father, worked as a translator.
She started to appear in films at 17, but had a love of learning and went on to study at the University of Belgrade. She considered becoming a journalist, but acting took over.
In the early 1950s, she worked for a film studio in Germany, but found it challenging because of her father’s fate. ‘‘I felt almost guilty by the success I had in Germany,’’ she said. ‘‘Then I understood more and more that there had been people who were against the regime, but couldn’t speak up, out of fear.’’
In 1956, she married Michael Szrajber, a Polish millionaire businessman who had served with the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade at Arnhem. After their wedding he whisked her away to the south of France, breaking her contract with the German studio. He wrote a
cheque for the £2000 (about £50,000 today) demanded in compensation.
The couple moved to Britain. With the aid of books by W Somerset Maugham, she quickly learnt English, adding to her fluency in Serbo-Croat, Russian, French and German.
With her high cheekbones and alabaster skin, Regin had the exotic look that the makers of the Bond films were seeking. She landed a role in From Russia With Love in
1963, playing the girlfriend of a British agent in Istanbul.
A modest and softly spoken woman, Regin later founded Honeyglen Publishing, which specialised in the philosophy of history and belles-lettres. She wrote a novel, The Victims and the Fools, based on her wartime experiences, and recently finished a memoir. She had long reconciled herself to the fact that her epitaph would be ‘‘Bond girl’’.
Her husband died in 2009. She is survived by their daughter, Tanya, who researches
19th-century French lithographs and medals. – The Times