Britt’s 007 mission – to make sure Bond is always a man!
IT’S A debate that has even split the sisterhood of Bond girls: would a woman playing the iconic spy spell trouble-07?
Just days after Jane Seymour, pictured left as Solitaire in
1973’s Live And Let Die, suggested the time had come for James Bond to change gender, Britt Ekland has hit back to insist that 007 must remain male.
Asked if she favoured a change, Miss Ekland, 77, said: ‘No! A resounding no. It ain’t going to happen.
‘That is not what [Bond author] Ian Fleming wanted.’ The Swedish bombshell of 1974’s
The Man With The Golden Gun added: ‘Bond is Bond for me, exactly as he was in the film
I did and that is it.
‘Today it is a modern Bond for young people. I am a Bond girl. We don’t exist any more. I am the last of a kind.’
Her comments are not only at odds with current 007 Daniel Craig and previous Bonds Pierce Brosnan and George Lazenby – who have all said they would welcome a female 007 – but also with Ms Seymour, 68, who backed Bond producer Barbara Broccoli’s idea to make the movies more ‘woke’.
She said: ‘More power to the women… why not? It’s time. Barbara Broccoli has steered this ship quite brilliantly.
‘When I did Live And Let Die, Roger Moore joined after Sean Connery and everyone said that can never happen.’
In the opening scenes of the next 007 film, No Time To Die, actress Lashana Lynch is introduced as the new owner of the 007 moniker, after Bond retires to Jamaica.