Pam Grier poses for photos in May 1977.
Photo: Getty Images, Michael Ochs Archives. All rights reserved.
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Pam Grier was set to be cast as the Bond girl in the 1983 Bond film Octopussy. The actress turned down the offer as she only wanted to play “deep” characters.
“Octopussy” in check:
When she was invited to a meeting with the film producers in the early 1980s, the actress actually didn’t want to go. She wasn’t interested in just playing eye candy or the damsel in distress. “My agents wanted me to meet with the Broccoli family and I said, ‘I’m not available,'” Grier told Entertainment Weekly. “They looked at me and said, ‘Then why are you here?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. My agent told me to meet here.’ But I just wanted to play really deep characters that were unpredictable. I refused everything.”
The role of a Bond girl didn’t appeal to her because she didn’t know what to do: “Am I going to help save him? does he save me A Bond girl is an afterthought.” She asked the producing family if they were challenging Bond or planning to kill him. “They hadn’t thought of that. I gave them other ideas that were much deeper and more interesting than what they were doing,” said the 73-year-old.
The role of Octopussy was then given to Maud Adams. Before that, she starred in the Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun. Grier made a name for herself in the 1970s as the first black action heroine in films such as Coffy, Foxy Brown and Friday Foster. After that she was seen in the series “Miami Vice” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown”.
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