Where are they now? Bond Girl Madeline Smith

Now 68, she has a grown-up daughter, Emily, and lives in south west London with her long-term partner.

“I grew up near Kew Gardens in south west London.

My father was a restorer of paintings who had people like the Attenboroughs as clients, and who also wrote children’s books.

But he was a difficult man.

My mother was Swiss and worked as a translator.

As an only child I had lots of imagination and was always making my friends act out plays I had written.

I went to a convent school in Ealing, west London, and wanted to be a doctor, but home life was so strange and difficult that I found it hard to bear and mucked up my A levels.

“I erupted out of convent school in July 1967 and wanted to have fun, so I got a job at Biba, the fashion shop owned by the legendary Barbara Hulanicki.

Everything changed from a very grey world to full colour.

After six weeks I got spotted and asked if I would like to be in a film and do some modelling.

I adored modelling and knocked on the door of the Lucie Clayton Modelling Agency and they took me on for 18 months.

In the meantime, I had answered an ad in The Stage newspaper and auditioned for a film and got it; off that, I got an acting agent and those two careers ran parallel until I was persuaded to act full-time.

“I worked with the beautiful Ava Gardner in Tam Lin (1970) – she was very shy and always late – and with Trevor Howard in The Bawdy Adventures Of Tom Jones (1976).

“My first horror film was Taste The Blood Of Dracula (1970), then I was offered The Vampire Lovers (1970) with Peter Cushing.

“The Hammer film I’m more proud of is Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell (1974), but if I’m honest, I didn’t enjoy the horror films a lot. They’re cult hits, but I’m a comedy person; I like to make people laugh. My favourite role was working with Arthur Lowe in Doctor At Large (1971), in which I played his daughter.

I just adored the man. I’d also had a role in The Persuaders! (1971-72), and from that Roger Moore suggested me for the role of Miss Caruso in his first role as James Bond, in Live And Let Die (1973). What an absolutely delightful man he was – funny, shy and quite insecure about his acting.

“The 1970s were great fun, but all the time I was thinking, ‘I want to go back to my studies.’

I had decided to give it all up when I got the Bond film and Habeus Corpus on stage with Alec Guinness, so I kept at it.

I did go to university in the late 1970s – I did an English degree at Goldsmiths College in London.

“In 1974 I met the actor David Buck while making the TV show Crown Court. He was 15 years older than me and very bright, but not an easy man. We had our daughter, Emily, in 1984.

He died in 1989 aged just 55 and I grew up fast.

Later I went into the London play The Mousetrap.

“I’ve come sneaking back into acting.

I love doing readings and presenting, and I’m trying to think up ways to update a children’s book my father wrote.

“I’ll be hosting a James Bond concert featuring music from the movies. I love doing things like that.”