Why Spectre's Monica Bellucci Doesn't Consider Herself A True 'Bond Girl'

The Daniel Craig era of James Bond movies started strong with Martin Campbell's "Casino Royale" in 2006. Audiences reacted incredibly well to the gruffer, more brutal version of the character, as he fit handily into the world's post-9/11 political hopelessness. A dandyish cartoon James Bond did not fit into the zeitgeist of the '00s, and the character became Dionysian and brutish rather than Apollonian and refined. 

The Craig Bond films also introduced a novel concept into the franchise: each film was a direct sequel of the one that preceded it. Ordinarily, Bond films stood on their own, not requiring much knowledge of the films that came before. Now, bad guys could be set up in one picture only to pay off in a later chapter. 

Sam Mendes' 2015 film "Spectre" was a prime example of this. Throughout the preceding three movies, James Bond discovered increasingly suspicious clues that a massive network of supervillains was at play. In "Spectre," he finally discovered the title organization as well as its wicked leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz). It was also revealed that Blofeld had been carrying a long-term personal grudge against Bond.

Also in "Spectre," Italian superstar Monica Bellucci played a character named Lucia Sciarra, the wife of a dangerous assassin that Bond had been stalking. The assassin was dead, but Lucia could provide Bond with a ring and some information, revealing her hated husband's connection to shadowy villains. Naturally, Bond and Lucia become briefly carnally entangled. 

In "Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films" by Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury, producer Barbara Broccoli revealed that Eon, the Bond franchise's long-running production company, had been asking Bellucci to appear in a Bond movie for years. At age 51, though, Bellucci was no "Bond Girl." She insisted she was a Bond Woman.

Broccoli revealed just how long Eon had been pursuing Bellucci to appear in one of their films. She had been coveted as a Bong Girl for quite some time, since even before Daniel Craig took over the role. Indeed, Bellucci screen-tested for the role of Paris Carver, the part eventually played by Teri Hatcher in the 1997 film "Tomorrow Never Dies." Evidently, Pierce Brosnan really petitioned for Bellucci. Why the role went to Hatcher and not Bellucci has not been revealed. 

Bellucci was startled to be asked yet again to appear in "Spectre," mostly because she assumed she had aged out of playing a Bond Girl. The women James Bond meets and invariably beds throughout his movies tend to be in their 20s. Gemma Arterton, Talisa Soto, and Jane Seymour, for instance, were all 22 when they appeared in their respective Bond films. Notoriously, Roger Moore was 53 when he bedded the 24-year-old Carole Bouquet in "For Your Eyes Only." It seemed for only the third time in James Bond history, one of his comely female counterparts was going to be older than he. Bellucci said:

"My first thought was, 'How can I be a Bond girl at fifty?' After my audition, Sam Mendes told me that, for the first time in history, he wanted a woman of a similar age to the actor playing Bond ... I'd prefer to be called a Bond Woman or perhaps a Bond Lady."

The first time this happened was way back in 1963. Honor Blackman was 39 when she made "Goldfinger." Sean Connery was only 34. Then, in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," George Lazenby was one year younger than Diana Rigg.