At 29, model-turned-actress Kim Basinger didn’t want to be a Bond girl. In fact, when Never Say Never Again producers came with a script to play Domino Petachi opposite Sean Connery’s James Bond in 1983, she tried to talk them out of it and even pitched other actresses for the job. “I do not look like that, okay?” she told them. While everyone in the world saw one of the most beautiful women, she felt otherwise. In her mind, it was a huge risk, especially since she had only been in a handful of movies and TV shows before.
Funny enough, it was actually Micheline Connery, Sean’s wife, who had met the up-and-coming actress in London, who suggested her to he husband for the role. He agreed after Dalila Di Lazzaro refused the Domino role. “I had never seen a Bond movie before [Never Say Never Again],” Basinger later told Interview Magazine. And that’s probably why it worked. Domino became one of the more human Bond love interests. She starts off as a damsel and eventually figures it out on her own.
Of course, the role quickly made Basinger a huge star. She kept getting offers after that, including 9 1/2 Weeks in 1986. Then came her role as Vicki Vale in Batman in 1989. By the ’90s, she was a huge star.
In the mid-’90s, L.A. Confidential showed up on her desk. Ironically, she initially refused that role too. After reading the script, she changed her mind. “There are just those times in your life when a script will come, and you’ll close the last page and go, ‘I want to say these words.’” At the time, Basinger had just had a baby. But she wanted to make it work, so she brought her daughter to set. Her work in that role got her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and Motion Picture and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.
These days, Basinger isn’t so involved with Hollywood anymore. Yes, she still does voice roles, but her focus is on her family. In fact, we hardly get to see her publicly outside of her daughter Ireland Baldwin’s Instagram, where she does sushi dates in sweatpants. Ireland once wrote, “I had a lonely childhood at times,” and now focuses on raising her own daughter, Holland. Basinger always seems to be in the background somewhere, too.
She seems very content with just being a grandma now, and not the world’s sexiest woman. But when she does show up, even at her age, she’s one of the most beautiful actresses around.
