Samantha Bond on Loraine
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Acclaimed 007 actress Samantha Bond celebrates turning 60 today. The English actress is best known for her role as Miss Moneypenny, the private secretary of M, across four Bond films, in which she starred opposite actor Pierce Brosnan. But it seems that the starlet has barely aged a day since her role in the 007 films.
I’d have been unable to come into the West End
Samantha Bond
More recently, the star has graced the small screen as Lady Rosamund Painswick in Downton Abbey, starring alongside the likes of Maggie Smith and Michelle Dockery.
Freshfaced Samantha has barely aged a day since landing her iconic role alongside Pierce Brosnan in numerous 007 films in the late 1990s.
Attending the BAFTA celebrations of Downton Abbey at the Richmond Theatre in 2015, the star stunned in a plunging dress that hugged her curves in all the right places.
Samantha looked ever the glamorous James Bond pin-up as she posed seductively with one hand on her hip, showcasing her hourglass figure.
It seems that a career in acting was always on the cards for Samantha, having been born into a theatrical family in London.
The daughter of actor Philip Bond and TV producer Pat Sandys, Samantha had a bohemian upbringing surrounded by show business personalities.
The star landed her first role at the age of 21 in a stage production of Daisy Pulls It Off in a theatre in Southampton, before going on to appear in the BBC’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.
She then went on to star as Julia Simmons in the BBC’s version of Agatha Christie’s crime novel A Murder is Announced.
In 1989, the star married stage actor Alexander Hanson, with whom she shares two children, Molly and Tom.
In the 1990s, Samantha went on to star in the author’s ITV adaptation of Poirot, opposite David Suchet who played Hercule Poirot.
Samantha made her big-screen debut as Mrs. Weston in Jane Austen’s Emma, which also featured Kate Beckinsale as the main character.
But it was in 1995 that Samantha landed her most acclaimed role yet as Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond franchise.
For seven years, the star played the part of M’s secretary at MI6.
She starred opposite 007 Agent Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Die.
The actress later told the BBC that she decided to retire from the role of Mis Moneypenny when Brosnan stepped down as the lead.
However, she revisited the character for London’s 2012 Olympic bid, with Bond actor Roger Moore also featuring.
She went on to star in the BBC’s Outnumbered over seven years, but it was her role as Lady Rosamund Painswick in Downton Abbey that saw her nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.
In 2012 the star confirmed her exit from Downton Abbey after its second series, saying that she didn’t like “fluttering in and out” of the show.
She said: “The Christmas episode was lovely.
“If something happened to change the circumstances of the family and she was there more…
“But, because of the nature of the part, you just pop in and pop out so I’d have been unable to come into the West End and play the female lead in this play,” she explained to the MailOnline.
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