SLEAZE QUEEN – Ursula Andress

Published on: 20th January, 2010

SLEAZE QUEEN - Ursula Andress  | read this item

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From Bond girl to Hammer beauty, Swiss icon Ursula Andress was the queen of fantasy during the 1960s and a sex symbol to millions. To further fuel this reputation, she even stripped and posed for Playboy, bearing all to her devoted fan base. Having worked in almost every conceivable genre in a variety of roles, Andress would spend the 1960s and ’70s appearing in one cult classic after another. Born in Ostermundigen in Switzerland on March 17 1936, Andress first entered the movie industry at the age of eighteen with a small role in the Italian comedy Un americano a Roma (An American in Rome). Other offers soon followed, but it was not until 1962 that she would finally get her big break after being cast as the seductive Honey Ryder, the quintessential Bond girl, in Terence Young’s adaptation of Ian Fleming’s 1958 spy novel Dr. No. The film, which would also launch the career of Scottish actor Sean Connery (who would go on to portray the character six more times), was a phenomenal success, largely thanks to Andress’s now-iconic introduction, emerging from the ocean in a white bikini.

Soon afterwards, Andress would land the role of Ayesha in the British production She, which was one of many successful ventures for Hammer. Starring alongside Peter Cushing and John Richardson, both of whom had previously appeared in other films for the studio (Dracula and One Million Years B.C., respectively), She would see Andress as a dangerous high priestess who attempts to seduce Richardson due to his resemblance to her dead lover. Marking yet another success for the young star, Andress would soon find herself in demand, her appearance often drawing in the crowds. In 1965, she would make the first of two collaborations with British comedy actor Peter Sellers in Clive Donner’s What’s New Pussycat?, which would also feature Peter O’Toole, Romy Schneider and Woody Allen (who was marking the transition from stand up comedy to filmmaking). The movie became a box office hit and would cement the reputations of all involved.

By this point, Andress had become a huge international star but still opted to work on low-key Italian productions as well. Her next English-speaking role came with The Blue Max, which was shot in Ireland and starred The A-Team’s George Peppard as an ambitious German fighter pilot during the First World War. The following year, Andress would reunite with Sellers for the spy spoof Casino Royale, which saw David Niven as an ageing Sir James Bond forced to come out of retirement to defeat Woody Allen’s Dr. Noah. The troubled project, which would involve a staggering six directors (including The Quatermass Xperiment’s Val Guest and Kenneth Hughes, one year before he shot the blockbuster Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) was only a modest success and was not well received by critics, marking the first high profile disappointment of Andress’s career. The James Bond series would fall on another hurdle with 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (marking George Lazenby’s only appearance in the role) before Connery returned for Diamonds Are Forever two years later.

Following on from another Italian project, Le dolci signore (Anyone Can Play), Andress appeared in the bank-heist flick Perfect Friday, starring alongside David Warner. Eager to rob his own bank, Mr Graham (Stanley Baker) enlists the help of spoilt couple Lord Nicholas Dorset (Warner) and his wife Lady Britt Dorset (Andress), who require a substantial amount of money to keep up their high maintenance. The title of the movie referred to the day that the robbery was planned for, and although it was not quite the success the producers had hoped for the film praised by critics for its performances. For her next role, Andress travelled to Spain to appear in the western Red Sun for director Terence Young. Co-starring Toshir? Mifune (Shichinin no Samurai/Seven Samurai) and Charles Bronson (The Magnificent Seven, which ironically was a loose remake of Seven Samurai), the film appeared several years after Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western trilogy and failed to perform as well as expected.

After returning to Italy to continue working on a variety of projects, Safari Express saw Andress teaming up with the legendary Jack Palance. The movie starred Giuliano Gemma and Peter Martell (real name: Pietro Martellanza) as organisers of safari tours who discover a beauty woman (Andress) suffering from amnesia. This would soon be followed by a loose sequel, Africa Express, in which Andress appeared as a mysterious woman and Palance as the man hunting her. arguably her most notorious Italian role came in 1977 with Sergio Martino’s La montagna del dio cannibale (The Mountain of the Cannibal God), which would later find itself on the UK’s ‘video nasty’ list due to its extreme mixture of sexuality and violence. Andress starred as Susan Stevenson, who is searching for her missing husband in the jungles of New Guinea and finds herself captured by natives and stripped, whilst her companions and slaughtered and eaten.

Andress’ last international success came in 1981 with Clash of the Titans, a $16m fantasy flick directed by Desmond Davis and starring Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom and Maggie Smith. Upon its initial release, the movie made an impressive $41m at the box office and prompted film critic Roger Ebert to declare it as ‘a grand and glorious romantic adventure, filled with grave heroes, beautiful heroines, fearsome monsters, and awe-inspiring duels to the death.’ Clash of the Titans would mark the end of Andress’ successful run that had lasted, one and off, for two decades. Throughout the 1980s she would occasionally appear in episodes of The Love Boat and Falcon Crest, whilst continuing to appear in both Swiss and movies (the latter including Fantaghirò 3 and Fantaghirò 4, both directed by Lamberto Bava). Now having almost disappeared entirely from the screen at the age of seventy-three, Ursula Andress is still considered one of the sexiest actresses of all time and her role in Dr. No is one of the most iconic in cinema history.

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