BARBARA CARRERA

INFINITY EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Ernie Magnotta interviews Nicaraguanborn actress Barbara Carrera, who earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress playing memorable Bond bad girl Fatima Blush in 1983’s Never Say Never Again...

For 007 fans, 1983 was known as “The Battle of the Bonds”. As Albert “Cubby” Broccoli’s Eon Productions was hard at work on Octopussy,the 13 ththinstalment in the official James

Bond franchise starring the late, great Sir Roger Moore, Jack Schwartzman’s Taliafilm was putting together a rival Bond film titled Never Say Never Again. This epic adventure would feature the return of original James Bond actor, the immortal Sean Connery who last played 007 12 years earlier in Eon’s Diamonds Are Forever.

Written by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. and directed by Irvin Kershner, Never Say Never Again—whose title was suggested by Connery’s wife Micheline due to her husband’s vow to never play Bond again after starring in Diamonds—was an updated remake of 1965’s Thunderball (whose rights were owned by Kevin McClory).

Featuring a catchy theme song performed by Lani Hall, Never Say Never Again was released in October of 1983 and made $160 million on a budget of only $36 million.

Besides Connery’s exciting return to the James Bond role, Never Say Never also features amazing performances from Klaus Maria Brandauer as Largo, Max Von Sydow as Blofeld, Kim Basinger as Domino, Bernie Casey as Felix Leiter, Alec McCowen as “Q”, Edward Fox as “M”, Pamela Salem as Moneypenny, and Gavan O’Herlihy as Domino’s brother Jack. The highly entertaining film also has fun appearances by Valerie Leon and Rowan Atkinson. However, even with all this great talent filling the silver screen, the stand-out performance (in this writer’s opinion) was Barbara Carrera as evil assassin Fatima Blush (based on Thunderball’s Fiona Volpe).

It was a real thrill for me to be able to chat with the incredibly lovely and extremely talented Carrera about her sensational performance as the Bond villainess. Barbara, who normally doesn’t do interviews since retiring from acting, kindly made an exception due to it being the 40ththanniversary of Never Say Never Again. The gifted, very down to earth and funny actress went into great detail about a plethora of subjects such as her early modelling career, landing the role of Fatima, the complex construction of the character, handling an eight foot boa constrictor, Never Say Never’s ongoing battle with Eon, and working with both director Irvin Kershner and the legendary Sean Connery.

Barbara, you sound exactly the same as you did in all the wonderful films I saw you in.

Oh, really? Because in some of my early films I had to speak with a bit of an accent. Like in Condorman. I spoke with a Russian accent in that one.

Before becoming an actress, you had quite a wonderful modelling career, right?

Yes. That was my first success in life. I was just out of school and I went to New York. One day, I was crossing the street on 5ththavenue and this woman approached me at the red light and asked me if I was a model. (Laughs) Of course, I was flattered to death, but I wasn’t a model and I never thought I could be a model. But I took what she told me to heart and seriously thought about being one.

I had a friend who had done some modelling with the Eileen Ford Agency in New York. At that time, I had no idea who Eileen Ford was, but I was told she was the best agent in New York. However, the agency was only interested in European models. Most of their models were German, British, Swedish, etc. All blonde Europeans. So, I thought about that. I decided to lie about where I was from and I got an appointment with the agency. I spoke Spanish. It was my first language. So I told them I was from Barcelona.