Bond girls Shirley Eaton and Caroline Munro at Western Film Fair, North Carolina

In the 1964 film Goldfinger, actress Shirley Eaton had only a few minutes of screen time. But she made a lasting impression.

She played Jill Masterson, who falls for the charms of James Bond and ends up dead -- her body painted gold and left as a warning.

That image, of her covered in gold draped across a bed, has become an iconic Hollywood image. And 44 years later, Eaton still has a loyal fan following, reports the Winston-Salem Journal.

"That's the one you see," Eaton said by phone from her home just outside of London. "That's why people still queue up and want to see me. I started working at age 12 and worked until I was 32, as a singer, dancer, started in films at 16…. But five minutes in one film and you're remembered forever, you're a piece of cinema history."

Eaton will be in Winston-Salem next week to attend the Western Film Fair, a film festival being held Wednesday through Saturday at the Clarion Sundance Plaza Hotel. Eaton and other celebrities will be at the festival Thursday through Saturday; Wednesday will have "early bird" screenings of some films.

The festival, now in its 31st year, includes screenings of Westerns, plus a dealers' room with movie memorabilia, autograph sessions, panel discussions and a banquet with live entertainment.

This is the festival's first year in Winston-Salem. Most of the previous festivals were held in Charlotte, where the show averaged 500 to 1,000 attendees.

"Charlotte's grown to the point that it just priced us out of the market," said Wayne Short, the president of the Western Film Preservation Society, which sponsors the festival. "We just got lost in the shuffle. We thought a new venue might help us and give people in other parts of the state a chance to visit us."

The festival focuses largely on Westerns. When the promoters heard that Shirley Eaton was available, they thought that she would be a good fit for the show. "There are a lot of Bond fans out there," Short said.

Eaton makes about four appearances at fan gatherings each year, mostly in her native England and in the United States. "I just don't do too many of them (the conventions)," she said. "I like to keep the fans eager. If you do every one, they don't look forward to you coming as much."

She was 27 when she filmed the Bond role and had already appeared in more than 20 movies. Most of those were in England, including the popular Carry On comedy series.

When she took the role in Goldfinger, she had no idea that the film would become such an enduring hit.

"We never do, do we?" she asked. "The only thing about Goldfinger is there was excitement brewing after the first two Bond films."

In the movie, the villain Auric Goldfinger, who is obsessed with gold, murders Jill by covering her in gold paint, which leads to "skin suffocation."

Thanks to strategic camera angles, director Guy Hamilton made it appear that Eaton was naked. But she wore pasties and a G-string.

The makeup "was hot, very, very hot" she said. "It wasn't paint, by the way, like you'd paint a chair with. It was this thick gel with millions of gold particles in it."

She appeared opposite Sean Connery in the film and has met actors who played Bond in subsequent films, including current star Daniel Craig. "Roger Moore is a very dear friend," she said. "I met Daniel Craig the other day, and he was a charming man…. I was impressed with his nice normalness; he's quite different than Bond off the screen."

At the time she filmed Goldfinger, Eaton was already married with one son. By 1969, she decided to bow out of show business and focus on raising her two sons.

"I had the woman's dilemma," she said. "I was never that ambitious, and my home life was more important…. I felt I'd had enough of this being away from my family."

Her last film, in 1969, was The Seven Secrets of Sumuru, aka The Girl From Rio, in which she played a diabolical leader of a group of warrior women.

She said she has no regrets about choosing family over celebrity.

"I'm nice and grounded because I did what I did," she said. "I had a long time to have a good marriage and a happy life. And now I get to do what I want to do."

She pursued other creative endeavors, attending art school and learning how to paint and sculpt. She also started writing poetry and recently released a book of poems, Golden Touch. Roger Moore wrote the introduction to the book.

Though she doesn't plan to take on any major film roles, she wouldn't mind returning for a small part.

"I'd love to do a lovely little cameo," she said. "I'd like to be Julia Roberts' mother in something."

The Western Film Fair will run July 16-19 at the Clarion Sundance Plaza Hotel, 3050 University Parkway in Winston-Salem. In addition to Eaton, guest stars will include fellow Bond girl Caroline Munro (The Spy Who Loved Me) and actors from film and television, including James Best (The Dukes of Hazzard), Betty Lynn (The Andy Griffith Show) and more. For more information and a complete list of guest stars and screenings, go to www.westernfilmfair.com. Tickets for Thursday through Saturday are $20 a day, $75 for a three-day pass for couples. Tickets are $5 for Wednesday's "early-bird" screenings.

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