career death knell for the girls
crawfordboon
Posts: 126MI6 Agent
With the exception of Ursula Andress, I can't think of a single actress whop had her movie career boosted by appearing in James Bond. Lois Maxwell complained that she was typecast, and it you think of the Bond girls, none of them have gone on to great fame on the silver screen, really.
Teri Hatcher is back on TV, Denise Richards was hot in 1999 but rarely seen now, and Halle Berry has been reduced to a minor role in the X-Men movies. And these are the most prominent! Honor Blackman ended up as a crinckly mother-in-law on 'The Upper Hand', Barbara Bach became known for who she was married to (as did Brit Ekland), and Fiona Fullerton works as an estate agent now!
I challenge you to find a Bond girl who went on to bigger and better things afterwards, and further, answer me why they haven't gone on to anything decent?
Teri Hatcher is back on TV, Denise Richards was hot in 1999 but rarely seen now, and Halle Berry has been reduced to a minor role in the X-Men movies. And these are the most prominent! Honor Blackman ended up as a crinckly mother-in-law on 'The Upper Hand', Barbara Bach became known for who she was married to (as did Brit Ekland), and Fiona Fullerton works as an estate agent now!
I challenge you to find a Bond girl who went on to bigger and better things afterwards, and further, answer me why they haven't gone on to anything decent?
Comments
Kim Basinger went on from 007 to box office and Oscar success.
Diana Rigg has had a solid stage/TV/movie career, recieved her gong from the Queen, and isn't complaining.
Jacqueline Bisset went on to become a major star of the 70s.
Joanna Lumley proceeded to bigger roles in film and TV.
Minnie Driver did rather well in Hollywood.
Rosamund Pike's career is advancing nicely.
I know, I know, I'm reaching
Paraphrasing ...
Bond films--especially something on the level of (love it or hate it) MR--are a once-in-a-lifetime deal. No matter who you are, you will never again participate in that sort of juggernaut ... something with that kind of budget, that degree of art direction, that level of global publicity. MR made, conservatively, US$ 200M. Even if your next film earned, say, US$ 50M (still regarded as big box office), it's nonetheless going to be regarded as a bomb by comparison.
If you've got a Bond film on your resume, no matter how many other movies you do, that's always going to be the pinnacle in terms of public spotlight. So, I've come to think of 007 now not as the "death knell," but as the thing that simply overshadowed everything else.
Another aspect to consider is the idea that we measure all of this by "Hollywood" standards and while today it's become more of a focal point for the entertainment industry than ever, that wasn't necessarily the case in '60s and '70s. That is, alot of the actresses who "disappeared" actually did pretty well "back home" in Italy or France or wherever making movies in their native language that never saw distribution outside their own countries.
Too--and I'll grant that this isn't particularly PC but it happened--some of the women used their brush with greatness to achieve a different end: They chose to accept the marriage proposals and off-camera carreer opportunities which came their way because of the exposure Bond gave them and became, quite probably, more successful and empowered off-screen than they ever could have on.
Ultimately, because we have a series of twenty plus films, there's this pattern we feel we can point to and say, "look how many of these girls never became big stars!" Realistically, though, what with maybe three women per film, were we really going to wind-up with sixty successful actresses? To that same end, couldn't you also say that, unless you're Harrison Ford, being in a "Star Wars" movie is a "death knell?" In fact, other than Hilary Swank, how many of the female leads can you name in any of the "Best Picture" winners or nominees of the last five years?
Has Bond "made" the career of very many actresses? I think largely not; from the other posts, Janssen is one of the only names that ever comes to my mind as being "discovered" in a Bond film and continuing to be "big box office." By the same token, though, I think there are plenty of women to whom Bond did give a boost but we simply fail to perceive it because the total box office for the balance of their resumes doesn't equal that debut we're so focused on.
I suppose Basinger would be the one exception but then again NSNA wasn't an official Bond film! Same goes for Bissett.
Michelle Yeoh is probably the closest mainstraim post-Bond female film success story. Sort of sums it up...
However,here are a few observations of my own:
Famke Janssen's enjoyed a very successful motion picture career ever since her breakout performance as Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye.Not only has she starred in big movies such as the "X-Men" trilogy,but she's also played leading(or supporting)parts in many other films as well.Janssen appears in both large movies and independent films alike.Of all of the Bond Girls, her selection of movies and roles is probably the most varied(comedy,drama,horror,science fiction,satire,thrillers).
Then there's Jane Seymour who--following her brief exposure in Live and Let Die-- went on to play many roles in a number of expensive and important productions for network television.Seymour was the acknowledged "Queen of the Mini-Series" during the 1980s, and starred in a variety of big (4-6 hour) productions ranging from adaptations of East of Eden,to The Sun Also Rises,to The Scarlet Pimpernel to War and Remembrance.Seymour's versatility was remarkable(she spoke with a variety of credible accents and wasn't always playing a glamour girl-witness her turn as Wallis Warfield Simpson,for instance), and her performances were often critically acclaimed.She's had an exceptional career and an impressive resume.
As for Michelle Yoeh?Michelle was already a big name in Hong Kong cinema and was a major motion picture star throughout Asia long before she ever appeared in Tomorrow Never Dies.If anything,it was she who helped to give Tomorrow Never Dies a large boxoffice in the Asian countries.
So, in effect, a woman who appears in a Bond film and then doesn't go on to be a major movie star is consigned to a mediocre career? As Willie Garvin points out, this radically discounts the career of Jane Seymour, who has been working steadily ever since LALD--not only in films (she was recently in a minor little thing called Wedding Crashers and got a lot of attention for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it topless scene), but in TV movies, in miniseries, and in her own TV show. More people today probably associate her with Dr. Quinn than they do with Solitaire.
I also think there's an assumption here that because some of these actresses haven't appeared in English-speaking films then their careers are dead. Many of the Bond women returned to their home countries to either continue already-established careers or to go on to greater acting challenges. In this category you'd have to place Claudine Auger, Luciana Paluzzi, and Karin Dor. Carole Bouquet is now one of the most famous and best-respected actresses in France, and she even won the French equivalent of the Oscar for one of her performances.
Also, a few of the Bond women really weren't actresses and chose to not pursue acting much beyond Bond. Daniela Bianchi was a beauty queen; she didn't particularly enjoy acting, so she gave it up by the end of the 1960s. Tania Mallet (Tilly Masterson) was a model and she discovered that her salary as an actress was a fraction of what she made modelling, so she happily returned to her earlier career. You could further say that a few Bond actresses--namely Jill St. John, Britt Ekland, and Maud Adams (in Octopussy)--were nearing the end of their days as sex symbols when they appeared in their Bond movies, and so their appearances became less frequent. . .though all of them still show up from time to time.
So. . .do these examples qualify as "better things" and "something decent?"
Sure, Jane Seymour is now best known as a TV actress, but that doesn't make her a major star in film terms. What I'm getting at is that no women really used Bond as a launching pad for a majorly successful maintrsteam film career (possibly Kim Basinger), and I don't care if she starred in Dr Quinn, you can't try to claim that Jane Seymour is still big box office, she is not.
You said "bigger and better things," not necessarily movies. Then again, you never originally said American or English films or box-office smashes. You seem to be changing your terms at will, and I find your dismissal of Jane Seymour's fame and popularity ridiculous. I'm sure there are plenty of lesser-known actresses who'd trade their careers with Jane Seymour's in a heartbeat.
As for Bond films "boosting" the careers of the actors you named. . .Well, of course, Bond turned Connery into a star, and you could argue that it got Robert Shaw established as an actor (he was a well-known playwright when he signed on to FRWL). But pretty much every other actor you mentioned--Pleasance, Savalas, Christopher Lee, Kotto, Walken, et. al--were established LONG before they played in a Bond film. What's more, after appearing in a Bond film, some of these actors had their greatest successes in television, not film: Jack Lord, Telly Savalas, Robert Davi. Did appearing in a Bond film kill their careers? I guess I don't see why you're so entrenched in this particular argument.
On the point of the male actors you claim were already big stars, fari enough some of them were, but the point, obviously, is that the likes of Christopher Lee, Christoper Walken, and Sean Connery continue to be massively well-knwon to this day, appearing in big name movies regularly. What was the last big name film Maryam D'Abo appeared in, must have been TLD about 20 years ago.
It is unarguable that Bond women haven't gone on to be long term headlines stars in big box office mainstream film. That is what I am getting at, and that is what I have been getting at from the beginning. That is my defintion of a decent film career also, instead of talking abotu washed up has beens who slum it on TVMs or even STV productions, whatever the nominal 'artistic' worth of such things. Seriously, name me a former Bond girl whose status as a major money-spinning headliner in Hollywood who had a career boost from being in Bond. We've arl;eady said Andress for a short time in the 60s, Berry (debatably), and Kim Basinger (again, debatable as she was in NSNA and isn't the force she was, at all). You could say maybe Famke, but I'd argue against that.
The list of obscure ex-Bond girls is huge, compared to the great number of relativey famous men in the series' alumni. I think it is a Hollywood thing, i.e. discarding most women actors after the age of 40, and not really bringing them back until their 60s. It's documentable, despite a few exceptions, that there is no real demand for 35-60 actresses in major roles, compared to that for men. Negligible.
And going back to the Lois Chiles story, I could accept her claim that Bond has, purely due to its size, overshadowed all her other work, except for the fact that to my knowlege she has done nothing worthwhile anyway, and would have been absolutely nowhere had it not been for MR. Of course, being an ex-Bondgirl, she is pretty much nowhere these days anyway.
Granted, Papillon's acting career lasted for all of two seconds and Alison's isn't too long either, but still, their careers as Bond girls led them to get larger roles, Alison also had the unique opportunity to be a part of three big movie franchises, Bond, Indy, and LOTR (but she pulled out because she was pregnant
This thread really could be expanded, as I mentioned in my previous post, to talk about action film women in general not staying the course over several years, but I don't want to get censored by some over-zealous mod splitting hairs about the correct category for post content. In view of that, a short list will sufffice:
Where are they now?
* Carrie Fisher (Star Wars)
* Karen Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark)
* Kate Capshaw (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)
* Alison Doody (Last Crusade)
* Michelle Phieffer (SP, one of the Batman movies, can't recall which)
* Patsy Kensit (Lethal Weapon 2, which along with Batman and Last Crusade, shattered LTK in 89)
* Bonne Bedelia (Die Hard 1 and 2)
* Julia Nickson-Soul (Rambo)
I'm not cherry-picking examples here, these action franchises are resaonably similar to Bond in many ways, and similarly their female leads seem to have headed mroe of less straight to career stagnation. There are no Jamie Lee Curtis or Sigourney Weaver figures amongst the alumni of these kinds of films.
Maye this is to do with the type of actresses demanded by Bond/Die Hard/Lethal, they jsut want pretty, undemanding types who will not be too expensive or hard to manage. Lynn Holly Johnson, Emily Bolton, and Talisa Soto hardly qualify to that level of status.
Famke Janssen did. Kim Basinger did. That's about it. So, for the most part you're right (sorry, HB). But so what?
Problem is, crawfordboon, stating such an obvious point, then challenging others to prove you wrong, is pointless and annoying. "I believe the sky to be blue -- answer me why it isn't so!" Shut up already.
Gee, ya think?? Wow, Sherlock, you should definitely start a career as a detective! 8-)
I'm not being provactive or annoying (at least not intentionally) by saying "I challenge you...", it's simply that this hadn't really occured to me until very recently, and I was again trying to emphasise how true this phenomenon is, if you think about it. What's the best way to get people to think about it? Challenge them to disprove it.
Stands to reason. Go figure.
Do me a favor, crawfordboon, and don't pick fights and then complain about the responses you get. You challenged people, and a lot of them took up that challenge. With that said, when was the last time Sharon Stone or Demi Moore was in a successful film? Both have become jokes--Stone for her weird behavior and for starring in Basic Instinct 2 and Moore for her relationship with Ashton Kutcher. Put them alongside Jane Seymour and there's no doubt who's the more respected performer.
No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney. You said, and I quote, "With the exception of Ursula Andress, I can't think of a single actress whop (sic) had her movie career boosted by appearing in James Bond. . . .it (sic) you think of the Bond girls, none of them have gone on to great fame on the silver screen, really." Yes, it's clear that you're talking about movies, but nowhere do you say "mainstream big box office, proper movies, not some minor role on TV, or less well known films." And it takes some gall to consider only "mainstream big box office" flicks to be "proper movies." Going by this standard, Meryl Streep has only one or two proper movies under her belt--the rest have been obscure arthouse films. I guess we could say that The Deer Hunter did nothing to boost her film career.
Not only do I challenge your belief that "big box office" movies are the only ones that really count, I also don't buy into the notion that all these actresses even wanted to do these kinds of movies. Let's take a look at this argument:
Well, Rosamund appeared opposite The Rock in the big-budget Doom--does that count? But I don't think Roz wants to make that kind of movie. She seems to be more content doing things like Pride and Prejudice--which was a respectable, Oscar-nominated success--than action roles. As for Denise Richards's career "going south," she's also had a couple of children since appearing in TWINE. Is it possible that she's spending more time with them than she is spending on her career? Not every Hollywood mom is a Britney Spears, y' know. Carey Lowell also continues to work--no, she's not doing the Sigourney Weaver roles (come to think of it, Sigourney Weaver doesn't even do the Sigourney Weaver roles any more), but she's doing what most actors say is important to them: working.
In rhetorical terms, you've committed a fallacy in argumentation by employing a non-sequitur: "There are a lot of established actors who played in Bond films and continue to be well-known. When was the last time you saw Maryam d'Abo?" Excuse me, WHAT? What does one have to do with the other? Maryam d'Abo was NOT a well-known actor before she appeared in a Bond film, so the point doesn't make sense. If, like Christopher Lee, she had been an established star for twenty years before appearing in TLD and then dropped off the map, you might have a point. Come to think of it, I haven't seen much of Louis Jourdan since Octopussy. That film must have killed his career.
And that is my definition of snobbery. Only has-beens appear on television? TV movies have little artistic worth? Small, non-mainstream films don't count? I guess Sibyl Danning, then, has had the most worthwhile mainstream career of any actress in history!
I've had my say on this matter. It's apparent that, no matter what, you'll say you're right and that's that. If Famke Janssen's success isn't enough to convince you, nothing will.
And crawford, NO ONE insults Alison Doody in AVTAK, how is she pointless? Jenny Flex is one of the most amazing characters in that movie, and if your opinion says pointless, and if you won't listen to other people, why have the thread?
Hardy summed it up quite nicely actually.
Regarding Famke Jannsen, yeah she's doen very well, but remember the old phrase "one swallow doesn't make a summer."
I don't understand why HB has got his back up so much on this. I come on here to make a case for a certain point of view, and you get all steamy and try and shoot me down over it. What exactly is your problem - why feel honour-bound to defend a bunch of has-been movie actresses?
As for snobbery, it's fair to say that when I talk about film stars and their status, doing TV or miniseries is just not the same as doing major movies. How about getting off your high horse, and engaging with the issues objectively, rather than being dismissive and angry. Or is it all an act you are putting on in the hope that Jane Seymour wil log onto this site, read your thread, and be tempted into making you husband #423?
Finally, you said nothing will convince me. Wrong! A well argued case with multiple serious examples will. So, if you want to respond, do so on that basis. And stop quoting back my words, I am well aware of what I wrote and I stand by it all, you do not have to remind me. You would be better served if you came up with some ideas of your own rather than attacking other people's.
Famke is not one swallow; several examples were listed earlier by myself and others. You asked a question and several cases were cited in reply. Balanced and reasonable replies were given.
As to the point in your latest post about actresses going "on to great fame and fortune in pictures of similar status to Bond": this is not how things work in the motion picture industry. The producers of an film series (eg Star Wars) would be less likely to cast an actress or indeed an actor prominent through their association with a comparable series. An established actor such as Christopher Lee, whose career embraces several decades and who has been associated with more well-known film series than any other living actor (I assume that listing these will not be necessary) is an entirely different matter.
Crawfordboon named some samples of other action films where the female lead basically dissappeared from the screen afterwards, so it may be indicative of an action-genre mindset. But the reality of the situation is that there are never really that many prominent female performers anymore. Julia Roberts has forged a popular career that has spanned from the 80s as a popular star, but other actresses who have lasted (Meryl Streep was mentioned above) are typically well-known not for being stunningly beautiful but rather for some incredible dramatic performances.
There are simply VERY few examples of women building a career in action films that have caused their name to persist. Crawfordboon is right on that account, but it has nothing to do with Bond. The James Bond films are an easy target becuase there are so many examples to study. But I'm sure for every year that a Bond movie was released, we can find another film that was released thatsame year with a female lead that ended up nowhere.
Or look at actors who have won Academy Awards. People like F. Murray Abraham of Louise Fletcher. Nothing major from them. I don't think the Bond series is anything else than an opportunity for actors/actresses to ply their craft. If any people treat the movies as something more than they are, it's people such as ourselves, who obviously like them so much. As much as I dislike Roger Moore in the movies, I give him credit for staying the role. He obviously understood that his lesser acting abilities fit in perfectly with the the lesser efforts of the Bond series and he found himself a comfortable home.
Crawfordboon, I did NOT attack you personally, and I do not engage in such discourse. I attacked your ARGUMENT, which is fair game. What's more, I quoted you because it is in those words where you make your argument. I find it astonishing that you began this thread by saying there isn't "a single actress who had her movie career boosted by appearing in James Bond;" then, when people rattled off the names of several successful actresses, you claim that you mean only mainstream blockbusters; and, when that point is assailed, you say that you're arguing that no actress has starred in a movie that can rival a Bond film. And you're saying that you're NOT changing the terms of this debate?
I am not particularly upset or annoyed over this discussion. I have a life, thank you very much, and life is too short to get worked up over this. But when you start a thread challenging people and then you shoot down their arguments BY CHANGING THE TERMS OF THE DEBATE AND CLAIMING YOU'VE BEEN MAKING THE SAME POINT ALL ALONG, then you're likely to rub some people the wrong way. Peace.
I'll give you Holly Johnson and Talisa Soto. But how much do you know of Emily Boltons career? I bet you have never seen TENKO? I bet you have never heard of TENKO? There she was mesmerising as Christina Campbell surviving a Japanese prisoner of war camp for five years..
Perhaps in America you just dont see what happens to these actresses. I saw 75 year old Honor Blackman on TV tonight. Diana Rigg has a damehood and I saw her as Medea at the National and without doubt the best actress I have ever seen.
But the best is Carole Bouquet. She went on to become a national treasure in France. She has made about twenty films. Her work was of such quality that a retrospective was held here in London on her best work. She has won award after award for her acting.
And I'll tell you what? I bet she regards it as far more success then some braindead Hollywood blockbuster. I know who I am more impressed by..
Its simple, women dont have the staying power in Hollywood that men do. Some women make it (women who are both sex symbols and talented) such as Michelle Phiffer or Cate Blanchette, but alot dont. I mean look at Halle Berry or Charliez Therron - both HUGE property when they won their Oscars, nowadays theyre not as big as they were back then. And this is less than 5 years later.
Anyway, alot of Bond actresses have been very well known in their home territories - Lucianna Palluzza, Ursulla Andress, Michelle Yeoh, Carole Bouquet, Izabella Scruplico. Danilla Bianchi was a goddess in Italian cinema for several years after FRWL.