Britt Ekland is a Swedish actress who first became famous in 1964 after her marriage to actor Peter Sellers. She has been featured in several films and television shows, including William Friedkin’s “The Night They Raided Minsky’s” in 1968, “Machine Gun McCain” in 1969, and the crime film “Get Carter” in 1971, which established her as a “Blonde Bombshell” type of character.
Ekland is best known for her role as a Bond girl in the 1974 film “The Man with the Golden Gun.” Being a Bond girl was a good experience for Ekland, and she speaks about that time fondly. The exposure from the role helped her appear in more projects, and eventually, she broke out of being typecast in similar roles.
Beginning in the 1970s, Ekland was in multiple horror films, including the adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Endless Night” and the anthology film “Asylum.” She was also in the cult horror film “The Wicker Man” in 1973. You could say that Ekland found a lot of success playing similar characters in all of her projects, but she did diversify her roles later in her career and has also been a successful stage performer.
Ekland today is still working at age 80 and shows no signs of slowing down. However, she has expressed some regrets from her youth. When she was younger, Ekland underwent several cosmetic procedures and admitted that she would not make the same decision if she could do it over again. Read on to learn more about Ekland and her struggles with her appearance.
Ekland was born on October 6, 1942, in Stockholm, Sweden. Her mother, Maj Britt, was a secretary while her father, Sven Axel Eklund, ran an upmarket clothing store in Stockholm and was captain of the Swedish national curling team. The actress has three younger brothers.
When she was a child, Ekland was overweight and struggled with her self-image. She told People Magazine back in 1980, “I was very heavy. God, I was brutal-looking. I always tried to be funny to make up for the fact that I was fat and ugly.” It took Ekland a long time to unlearn those harmful thought processes, and it’s safe to say they contributed to her decision to get plastic surgery later in life.
As a teenager, Ekland left school to perform and travel with a theater company. While in Italy, she was spotted by a talent agent who then sent her to London to audition for upcoming films.
She started with uncredited walk-on roles and bit parts in films such as “G.I. Blues” in 1960. Also in 1960, she got her first small supporting role in “The Happy Thieves.” Ekland was 18 years old when she started acting professionally.
Career Beginnings
For the first few years of Ekland’s career, she continued acting in minor supporting roles until landing her first major role in the George Marshall Western “Advance to the Rear” in 1964. That same year, Ekland was featured in the television film “A Carol for Another Christmas” alongside her husband at the time, Peter Sellers.
Ekland would go on to star in two more films with Sellers, “After the Fox” in 1966 and “The Bobo” in 1967. After that, in 1968, she earned critical acclaim with her performance in William Friedkin’s musical comedy film “The Night They Raided Minsky’s.” Ekland also appeared in a string of Italian films in the late 1960s including, “Machine Gun McCain,” “The Conspirators,” and as the role of Antigone in “The Cannibals.”
In 1971, Ekland starred alongside Michael Caine in the iconic crime film “Get Carter.” This put her on the map as a leading lady, and soon she was known as the blonde bombshell in a number of films. The film was a necessary stepping stone to getting cast in her most well-known role as a Bond girl in “The Man with the Golden Gun.”
Bond Girl
In “The Man with the Golden Gun,” Ekland starred as Mary Goodnight alongside Roger Moore, who played the titular character, James Bond. The film was Moore’s second time playing Bond, the fictional MI6 agent. Mary Goodnight was Bond’s assistant in the film, and the Sunday Mirror referred to the character as “an astoundingly stupid blonde British agent.”
Despite her character being met with a not-so-warm reception, Ekland still defends her role to this day. And it is undeniable that the recognition she received from the role has helped her career tremendously. She told The Guardian in May 2020, “I’m the proudest Bond girl there is because there are not a lot of us left, and there won’t be any in future.”
As someone who rose to fame in part for her look as a blonde bombshell, Ekland is defensive of the fact that Bond girls were meant to look pretty and not to add much to the film’s story. The actress doesn’t seem to mind this fact but admits that there is no room for classic Bond girls in today’s culture anymore. She told The Guardian that there is too much “political correctness” for that.
She elaborated in the same interview, “The Bond girl has to look good in a bikini: that was her role … The Bond girl of my era exists no more because they’re not presented that way. You wouldn’t see her in a bikini next to Daniel Craig in a suit today – the P.R. department would make sure that didn’t happen.”
In an interview with Piers Morgan on “Good Morning Britain,” Ekland was asked if she thought there might be a female James Bond someday. Her response was, “It’s not going to happen. I know Barbara (Broccoli, Bond producer). If I have any influence I’ll say there must always be a Bond. She can be anything, but she can’t be a James Bond.”
Ekland also shared her opinion on if the term should be changed from Bond girl to Bond woman. She told The Guardian, “Bond girls are a very nice title,” she said. “It’s what people want. It doesn’t have the same ring as ‘Bond woman.’” Ekland is very forthcoming and isn’t afraid to share her honest opinions.
Marriage to Sellers and Personal Struggles
Ekland married Sellers in 1964 while she was in her early 20s. When asked by The Guardian how she acted when she was young, Ekland responded, “I was extremely impulsive … I’m like a steamroller – I just go forward. I don’t have that stopper in me … Someone falls down in front of me, then I fall in love with him.” She credits this as part of the reason why she fell so madly in love with Sellers.
The couple divorced in 1968, and Ekland described Sellers as: “very possessive and very, very moody.” The actress described Seller’s mood swings as terrifying and said she thought he could have had Bipolar disorder, but it was never diagnosed. Ekland said that the man was never physically violent but was emotionally and verbally abusive.
It was hard for Ekland because the slightest things would set Sellers into a tirade. “If I spoke to my mother in Swedish, that would be a huge rant for hours, like this …” She mimicked an unintelligible speech to the interviewer. “He never took a pause,” Ekland shared.
Often, Ekland would have to go stay with friends to avoid confrontation with Sellers. She said, “One night, I just got in the car and drove to them to seek shelter … This continued throughout my marriage.”
This continued until one long night in Las Vegas when Sellers screamed at Ekland in a hotel room for hours after she allowed her picture to be taken by the paparazzi, according to The Guardian. Ekland had finally had enough and left him. “Well, I realised it wasn’t right – someone putting me through emotional and psychological warfare,” she shared about her decision to leave her husband of four years.
Unfortunately, Ekland’s life did not get easier after her marriage ended. The actress’s mother passed away in the 1980s from Alzheimer’s, and the loss had a profound impact on her. Ekland shared with The Guardian that she was exceptionally close with her mother and not as much with her father.
“Wherever I worked, she always came,” Ekland told the interviewer. The Guardian also reported this was the only time Ekland ever received professional help for her mental health. The actress said she tried antidepressants but stopped after a few days.
Ekland Today
The photos of Ekland today reveal a confident and beautiful woman who made some mistakes with her appearance in the past. Ekland told Daily Mail U.K. that she received multiple injections around the rim of her lips with Articol and that she was told it was a “new dental material.” Later she underwent more excruciating procedures to try and melt the material and fix the way her lips appeared.
In her interview with The Guardian, Ekland defended herself, saying, “To all the people who say: ‘She’s destroyed her face,’ – yes! I didn’t do that purposely; I don’t want to look like this, but I have no choice. I’ve learned to live with it, so you’d better learn to live with it.”
Ekland explained more in her interview with Daily Mail. “Everyone has the right to choose (surgery). I did all of that in my 50s but wouldn’t consider it again. I have no desire to look any different than I am,” she said about her decision to undergo lip-plumping procedures.
In the same interview, Ekland said, “I think it’s tragic because the one time you look really good is before you’re 25. Everyone is altering themselves so they all look older and older and older. I feel great now, better than I have for many years … getting older happens to everyone. It’s pointless complaining about it or wishing you could change.”
Ekland’s view on aging and her appearance is much healthier now than when she was young. “We’re all going in one direction and there is nothing we can do about that.. It’s just about looking after yourself while on that journey,” she told Daily Mail.
Ekland struggled with her looks as a child and thought she was ugly, and that can stick with a person even if they are lauded for their beauty as an adult. Even though everyone told her she was a bombshell beauty, Ekland did not see it herself.
In her interview with Daily Mail U.K., she said, “It destroyed my looks and ruined my face. It was the biggest mistake of my life. When I look at photographs of myself before I had it done, I looked very good. I can see that now, but I couldn’t see it at the time.”
Ekland has done the difficult inner work to see her true beauty, and now she hopes the world will do the same as well. She ended the interview with this statement: “It’s not going to give me more roles to make me look better. This is who I am and people have to accept it. I’ve accepted it, you accept it!”
In 2008, Ekland gave another interview to The Guardian titled “My Body and Soul,” discussing what she does to stay healthy now that she’s getting older. “I’ve learnt what I have to do, the foods I have to avoid, and I exercise a lot. I dieted all the time in the Sixties, but we had no idea what dieting meant – we thought it meant not eating anything,” Ekland explained.
Ekland also explained that she loves to try all different types of exercise. She shared, “I’ve been doing Pilates since 1974, I lift weights, I power walk every day and I run backwards. That’s sometimes a little hard when you’re not on your home turf, because you’ve got to find a place where there are no bumps in the way – or people.”
When asked about her thoughts on plastic surgery, Ekland responded, “I think it’s wonderful. But there should be an age limit: it should be absolutely forbidden for anyone under 40. It’s for older people – to lift the chin here and take a couple of crow’s feet out there – not for young people who want to be bigger and plumper or thinner.”
Ekland ended her interview with a profound thought. The interviewer asked if she was happy, and Ekland responded, “So, yes, I am happy. But I can’t say that, at this point in my life, being happy is of paramount importance. I don’t have to be happy, I need to be satisfied – and I am.” Hopefully, Ekland stays both happy and satisfied and can move on from past regrets.
What do you think of Ekland’s photos before and after surgery? Do you have an opinion on plastic surgery? Let us know your thoughts, and be sure to send this on to your friends and family who love James Bond films.
