Barbara Bach as Bond girl Agent XXX in The Spy Who Loved Me
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The much-missed Roger Moore, who would have been 95 tomorrow, was absolutely petrified during one particular scene in The Spy Who Loved Me. It wasn’t that iconic opener where he hurtles down ski slopes and then hurls himself off a cliff and sails away under a Union Jack parachute. After all, much of that was done by stuntmen. Even though the star himself said (no doubt with an ironically arched eyebrow): “I did some of the stunts like jumping off a cliff with a parachute but I always had a double for the kissing scenes. I’m doubled in love scenes. I’m not good after the third take.” He later recalled how he would occasionally introduce himself as “Bond, Brooke Bond… like the tea” during filming.
Talking again about stunts, he added: “I do all of them actually… I do all my own lying.”
Naturally, this was just another example of the famous sense of humour that was as sharp as his suits. Although he played one of the greatest action film heroes in cinema history, Moore would have been the first to admit that he wasn’t perhaps a classic action film star.
Yet, he braved some truly terrifying sequences, including one that resulted in an on-set fatality, while being absolutely paralysed by another.
The Spy Who Loved Me was far less outlandish and ambitious than the preceding sci-fi hokum of Moonraker (with a far smaller budget).
Moore himself said of the film: “I’m delighted with this one. The villains are more recognisable as regular human beings. They don’t want to build empires in space or under the sea.”
He fought the producers over the scene Bond kicks villain Emile Leopold Locque’s Mercedes Benz (with him inside it) over the edge of a cliff, arguing it did not fit his rather lighter iteration of the ruthless spy. However, he was persuaded to go ahead with it.
He also strapped himself in for the death-defying (in real life not just on screen) bobsleigh chase.
Moore was lashed to a sled speeding down a cliff edge with co-star John Wyman who said:”You feared for your life. You might think this was the end of it… we could have both gone off the cliff had the guy directing the sled turned the wrong way.”
In fact, For Your Eyes Only was the first Bond film to suffer an on-set fatality, when 23-year-old stuntman, Paolo Rigoni was fatally hurt injured after he became trapped beneath an overturned bobsleigh. He died of his injuries in hospital.
Another iconic scene was so hair-raising hardened stunt veteran Rick Sylvester said: “From where we were, you could see the local cemetery; and the box [to stop my fall] looked like a casket. You didn’t need to be an English major to connect the dots.”
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It was this climactic sequence, filmed against vertiginous cliffs in Greece, that gave Moore one of the worst days of his career.
The scenes were particularly traumatic for Moore because he suffered from vertigo. Even though he was only dangled above a four-foot drop (compared to twenty for Sylvester), he was paralysed with fear at the though of filming.
In the end, the normal suave and laid back actor would down a calming cocktail of valium and alcohol throughout sessions which required mainly close-ups of him hanging suspended off a sheer rock face.
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However, with his typical aplomb, the actor made sure to keep the atmosphere light on set.
Bond girl Lynn-Holly Johnson paid tribute to Moore’s: “marvellously protective warmth…the utmost charismatic, hysterically sagacious fellow, and yet always a large kind-hearted gent.”
For Your Eyes Only co-star Jack Klaff, who played villain Apostis, said: “Roger was very unassuming, but he knew his place, he knew that he was the star. When we were on Corfu, he would arrive each morning in his own boat with a cigar and always say, ‘Never fear, The Saint is here.’ Roger told an awful lot of really, really filthy jokes. His twinkle was Olympic class.”
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