James Bond star Lana Wood: She bedded Sean Connery and expected Hollywood to fall at her feet, but a
The Bond girl who blew it: She bedded Sean Connery and expected Hollywood to fall at her feet, but after five husbands, Plenty O'Toole star Lana Wood has plenty o'regrets
42
View
comments
'I think anyone would be hard-pushed to resist Sean (Connery),' said Lana Wood
Knowing what sort of domestic set-up to expect at the home of a former Bond Girl is a tricky one, especially when that Bond Girl is Lana Wood — a woman who seems to have gone through life collecting lovers in a way that makes even 007 look like an amateur.
Obviously, there won’t be any of her former husbands hanging around her California home, since four of those marriages ended in divorce and one was annulled.
Or was it five marriages, and two annulments?
History is unclear, and even the lady herself can’t tidy up the confusion.
‘One wasn’t really a marriage, but a nasty little thing,’ she says, vaguely.
‘I think I was only divorced once, and the rest were annulments. Or, maybe not. I can’t keep track actually, because it’s not that important. I just am who I am.’
And that’s before we even start on the high-profile men she shared encounters with along the way.
There was a fling with Sean Connery — he was Bond to her Plenty O’Toole in Diamonds Are Forever in 1971. Alain Delon, once described as the most beautiful man on the planet, was a former squeeze. Then there was Warren Beatty.
Yet, today, Lana Wood, younger sister of actress Natalie Wood, is sharing a home with her daughter, three grandchildren, a dog, a cat and a mouse. Is there really no man at all in her life today?
’No,’ admits the 65-year-old, cheerily.
‘I’ve given up. I surrender. I wave the white flag.’
As the Bond film series celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, there may only have been six actors playing James Bond in that time, but there are upwards of 80 actresses who can lay claim to having been a Bond Girl. Few of those can have had love lives as tangled as Lana’s.
At one point I ask her how many times she has been in love. She says ‘just once’ — but it turns out it wasn’t with any of her husbands, or the men she has been publicly linked to.
RELATED ARTICLES
Share this article
ShareInstead, she says cryptically, that another high-profile name from the entertainment world was the great love of her life, but she cannot name him.
‘I was with him for four years and was madly in love with him. In fact, on our last day of filming together I told Sean Connery I couldn’t see him any more, because I was going back to him. It was complicated. He was married. He kept saying he would leave his wife, but he never did. He’s still with her today.’
Maybe we should just summarise the whole thing by concluding that Lana Wood doesn’t ‘do’ conventional relationships. She agrees readily.
‘I went through my whole life wanting to feel I belonged. I was very, very lonely, so I would marry people that I wasn’t really in love with, and who weren’t right for me, because I hoped they would be.
'Even if a relationship was going well, I would run away before I could get hurt.’
'I was always an actress; Natalie was the star,' said Lana. Eight years her junior, she adored, idolised even, her sister, but could not compete with her in terms of fame and the affections of their Russian immigrant mother
Trying to unravel her romantic history adds fuel to the oft-spouted rumour that there is a curse attached to the Bond-Girl role. No sooner has an actress (and her ample cleavage) appeared by 007’s side than things start going pear-shaped, the theory goes. Careers crumble, private lives disintegrate and, unless you are an Honor Blackman or a Jane Seymour, obscurity beckons.
Is Lana — who would be the first to admit that her career hasn’t exactly blossomed since she bedded Bond — aware of the ‘curse’?
‘I have heard of it, but I think it would take a cleverer person than me to work out if there was something to it. But it is true that the Bond role didn’t open the doors I maybe thought it would.
'In fact, it didn’t open any doors at all.
‘All I was offered were sexpot roles, and you can’t be doing those for ever. I did suffer from being stereotyped. I remember once saying to a producer: “Think of me as the girl next door.”
‘He said: “Honey, if you are the girl next door you must live in a very racy neighbourhood.”’
The other myth, of course, is that being a Bond Girl was the epitome of glamour. Was it?
‘We were incredibly well looked-after on the set,’ says Lana. ‘I filmed in Las Vegas, and then Palm Springs, but glamorous it wasn’t. I had to be thrown into a pool at 3am, then go through the rigmarole of getting my hair and make-up redone when the director wanted another take.
‘At the time, I was mortified at my part in the film. A lot of my scenes were cut, but I didn’t know it until I saw the film. It felt like I bent over to pick up my popcorn and Plenty was dead.
‘I was not a happy camper. I recall thinking: “Is this what I’ve travelled all over the world promoting?”’
'Natalie was the embodiment of what my mum longed for in life. She worshipped Nat, I was the forgotten daughter,' said Lana
She wouldn’t be the first young starlet horrified to find her studious acting endeavours on the cutting-room floor, while the best cleavage shots remained intact.
But the intervening years — where Plenty has become something of a cult figure among Bond fans — have tempered her frustration.
‘For a long time, I thought I’d made a mistake with the character, but no longer. Now, when my life revolves around looking after my grandchildren, if I get a Bond-related invite, I jump at the chance.’
The truth is that, with or without Bond, Lana Wood’s life was never going to be anything approaching ordinary, and perhaps her relationships were always going to be flawed.
For Lana grew up in the shadow of her famous sister, Natalie Wood.
‘I was always an actress; Natalie was the star,’ is how Lana sums up their relationship.
Eight years Natalie’s junior, she adored, idolised even, her sister, but could not compete with her in terms of fame and the affections of their Russian immigrant mother.
‘Natalie was the embodiment of what my mum longed for in life.
'She worshipped Nat, I was the forgotten daughter. I don’t even remember telling her I had the Bond role — or any role for that matter.
‘After Nat died, it turned out that she was stuck with the daughter she didn’t really care about that much. It’s interesting how life does that.’
Lana is still an incredibly attractive woman, which makes it all the sadder to hear her admit that, even in her prime, she never considered herself beautiful. Didn’t the fact that the likes of Sean Connery and Warren Beatty were beating a path to her bed make her realise how desirable she was?
‘No, I never ever considered myself attractive. I was curvy, you see, quite big. Natalie had been tiny.
'In my eyes, she was the ideal and I was just the ugly sister. No amount of male attention did anything to shift that. It took years of therapy.’
That may explain why, shortly before she did the Bond film, Lana posed naked for Playboy, ‘which obviously made them sit up and take notice’.
Her sister was reportedly horrified; her mother’s reaction was that Natalie would never have resorted to such a thing.
Lana tried to have the photos pulled, but failed, and reasons now — rightly so — that she can’t really whinge about not being taken seriously in the film industry. Nor will she say that the fling with Connery –— or any of the others — was a mistake.
At the time, Connery had acquired a reputation of being ‘difficult’ on set, but the man Lana met ‘could not have been more helpful’.
So who made the first move?
‘He did. I was never that forward. We went out to dinner, then met some of his friends, then went for a walk, and you know. We actually started having an affair before filming began, but we kept it secret.
'Neither of us was married at the time, but it still isn’t done to be public about it.
‘I remember being very embarrassed when we had to do the love scenes, because we were trying not to let people know.
‘You want to be a good actress, but for it not to seem too convincing.’
Suffice to say she has fond memories of her time with Connery.
'I was very, very lonely, so I would marry people that I wasn't really in love with,' said Lana
‘I think anyone would be hard-pushed to resist Sean. I do find it funny that I felt such a need to be honest and upfront with him, telling him that I couldn’t keep seeing him once we finished filming. As if he was even thinking about that! He was probably laughing away to himself.’
No prizes for guessing which Bond was her favourite, then?
‘Sean. Every time. I do love Daniel Craig, too, though. Sean was a ladies man, but there was an edge to him that the character required, then. He didn’t have the softness that some of the other Bonds had. The others were fairly lacking, I think. Until Daniel Craig.’
The bonus with Craig is that he doesn’t have to wear a toupe for the part — which Connery did, even then.
‘And he hated it,’ she laughs. ‘He absolutely hated having to wear it.’
Ten years after she appeared in Diamonds Are Forever, when she had moved into the world of TV production, Lana’s world fell apart when her sister drowned in a tragedy that continues to haunt her.
At the peak of her international fame, following roles in West Side Story and Rebel Without A Cause, Natalie never returned from a yachting trip with her husband, actor Robert Wagner, and her co-star Christopher Walken.
At the time, the death was reported as a tragic accident, but questions about the circumstances have always been asked — most vocally by Lana herself.
Last year, it was announced that detectives were reviewing the case, in the light of apparently new evidence from the captain that Natalie and Wagner argued before she fell into the ocean.
Just last week, however, police said it was unlikely that charges would be brought, but Lana insists the case is ‘very much open’.
‘I spoke with the detectives a few days ago and they are being very thorough and very careful. I don’t know what will happen, but I hope that it brings some closure. Nat was the person I loved most dearly in the world.
‘It has been so many years, and so many people have been able to, how do you put it, sweep things under the carpet.’
Lana’s relationship with Wagner has not been an easy one. There were issues even before Natalie died, and she points out that she actually heard of her sister’s death via the news, not via Wagner direct. They fell out later when Lana sold clothes left to her by Natalie.
Has there been any contact recently?
‘Are you kidding?’ she says. ‘I don’t expect any contact, since he never even came to me to tell me there had been an accident. Everybody has their own demons, I guess.’
In some respects, her own life seems more outlandish than anything a Bond plot could offer, but her most recent struggles have been all too ordinary.
A few years ago, her only daughter was diagnosed with cancer. While she is now in remission, she is not in great health, so Lana has a hands-on role in raising her grandchildren. Before we speak, she has been doing the school run and getting to grips with the laundry.
What do her grandchildren make of her Bond Girl past?
‘They don’t give it a second thought,’ says Lana. ‘To them I’m just Grandma. To be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way.’
IS THERE A CURSE OF THE BOND GIRLS?
MARYAM D’ABO
WHO: Cellist and sniper Kara Milovy in 1987’s Living Daylights with Timothy Dalton.
SINCE BOND: Straight-to-video erotic thrillers such as Tomcat: Dangerous Desires and bit parts in TV dramas such as Red Shoe Diaries. Now, aged 51, she is fully recovered from a brain haemorrhage in 2007.
LOIS CHILES
WHO: Astronaut Dr Holly Goodhead in 1979’s Moonraker with Roger Moore. The former model already had success in The Way We Were and The Great Gatsby.
SINCE BOND: Now 64, she took a three-year break after her brother died of cancer, but her career never recovered.
JILL ST JOHN
WHO: Diamond smuggler Tiffany Case in 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever with Sean Connery. A former child star with a host of hits to her name.
SINCE BOND: Mainly TV movies and soaps. Now 71, she married fourth husband actor Robert Wagner in 1990. They made five films together, all flops.
DENISE RICHARDS
WHO: Busty, hot-pants wearing nuclear physicist Dr Christmas Jones in 1999’s The World Is Not Enough, with Pierce Brosnan.
AFTER BOND: A series of flops. Her marriage to Charlie Sheen resulted in two daughters and an acrimonious divorce. Now 41, as appeared on reality TV shows such as Dancing With The Stars.
IZABELLA SCORUPCO
WHO: Polish/Swedish former model and singer who played scientist Natalya Simanova in Pierce Brosnan’s first outing — 1995’s GoldenEye.
AFTER BOND: Hated the spotlight and took time off to marry a professional ice hockey player. Now 41, turned down the role in LA Confidential which won Kim Basinger an Oscar.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pa3IpbCmmZmhe6S7ja6iaJ6Voq6quI6aqa2hk6Gybn6PcXBucGdkl6K5xKxke6eemXq0wMCrZIWZnpZ6mLvOnWSMoJVir6aww56bZouVlrtuj86npZ6qqWKyubzEnKuenF19vK242LCmqJxdm66tuIyfnJ6sXZ3CtK7Ap5usZaKatLOx06xloaydoQ%3D%3D