Bond girl Carole Bouquet talks drugs, demons and her doomed affair

Carole Bouquet, who played Melina Havelock in For Yours Eyes Only opposite Roger Moore, has talked to UK newspaper The Independent about her life so far, and the ups and downs in the public spotlight in her home country.

Click here to read the full interview.

Carole Bouquet is the former Bond girl and Chanel model whose life is a source of constant fascination in her native France. She captivated Gérard Depardieu, had her phone bugged by François Mitterand and was recently accused of having an affair with President Sarkozy. Here the actress talks candidly about drugs, powerful men and her new-found political activism.

"When I was working with Gérard Depardieu ," Bouquet says, "he was married. I never wanted to steal him. The idea never occurred to me." She speaks in quietly articulated, very un-actorish French, occasionally delivering a phrase in English. It's one of the sadnesses of her career that her greatest roles, such as her interpretation of Resistance heroine Lucie Aubrac, in Claude Berri's 1997 film of the same name, received little or no distribution in North America or the UK. In Britain, she's still best known for a fleeting appearance in Francis Ford Coppola's contribution to New York Stories, and as Roger Moore's companion in the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only. ("No fun," says Bouquet.)

Since then, Bouquet, unlike her most famous ex-lover, has been highly discriminating in the roles she has accepted. "The first time I met Depardieu, in the late 1980s," I tell her, "he said, and I quote him precisely, that: 'I will never, ever, make crap films for money.' Have you seen him in Bimboland?"

Thanks to `JC` for the alert.

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