CLAUDINE AUGER

(28 April 1941 - 18 December 2019)

Although the French actress Claudine Auger, who has died aged 78 following a long illness, made just a few English-speaking films, she will always be remembered for being the first French actress to become a Bond girl. In 1965 she played Domino in Thunderball with Sean Connery, doing all her own underwater swimming stunts. Director Terence Young also used her in Triple Cross (1966) with Christopher Plummer and Yul Brynner. In 1958 she had been crowned Miss France but then went on to study acting at the Paris Drama Conservatoire. Most of her career was spent in French, Italian and Spanish films and some television series including some at the BBC. In her lifetime she clocked up over eighty appearances, working with many celebrated directors including Jean Cocteau, Marcel Carnḗ, Mario Monicelli, Jean Girault, Jacques Deray, Pierre Etaix and Ettore Scola. Her first film was Christine in 1958 with Alain Delon, then she did Testament d’Orphḗe for Cocteau. In 1962 she was in the ‘Envy’ section of the portmanteau film The Seven Deadly Sins directed by Edouard Molinaro, a film that had seven directors. Her first US film was Robert Parrish’s In the French Style (1963) with Jean Seberg. After Triple Cross she acted with Peter Cushing in Black Jack and in 1992 was in Andrew Birkin’s Salt On Our Skin with Greta Scacchi. Her last appearance was in a French TV adaptation of Stendhal’s The Red and the Black in 1997. Claudine Auger was married twice, first to the writer, director and editor Pierre Gaspard-Huit for ten years from 1959. She married the British businessman Peter Brent in 1984 (but he died in 2008). At the age of 49 she gave birth to a daughter, Jessica.

MICHAEL DARVELL