Ursula Andress (born March 19, 1936) is a Swiss actress who was a major sex symbol of the 1960s. She is best known for her role as the first Bond girl to be seen in films. Andress was born in Ostermundigen, Berne, Switzerland, to a Swiss mother and a German father. Her father, Rolf Andress, was a German diplomat. He disappeared during World War II.

Ursula Andress.

Andress started her career as an art model in Rome, which led to her first roles in the active Italian film industry. She became famous as Honey Ryder, a shell diver and James Bond’s object of desire in Dr No (1962), the first Bond film. Her introduction in Dr No became one of the most iconic moments of the franchise. She rises out of the Caribbean Sea in a white bikini, singing a calypso and tossing back her blonde hair. (The combination of sea, shells, and a stunning beauty has led some critics to trace the inspiration for this scene to Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.) Andress has been considered the first and best Bond Girl by fans. In 1963, she won a Golden Globe for Best Promising Newcomer (Female).

Andress co-starred with Elvis Presley in the 1963 film, Fun in Acapulco and she also appeared in the parody Bond film Casino Royale (1967) as Vesper Lynd, an occasional spy who persuades Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) to carry out a mission. Her heavy accent was dubbed over by Monica Van Der Syl in Dr No, but she used her own voice in Casino Royale.

“My entrance in the film wearing the bikini on that beautiful beach made me world famous as ‘the Bond girl'”, she said onec, and the bikini from this “classic moment in cinema and Bond history” sold for £35,000 at auction in 2001. In 2003, in a UK Survey by Channel 4, her entrance in Dr No was voted #1 in “the 100 Greatest Sexy Moments”. In 2007, Australian series 20 to 1 ranked her entrance in Dr No as the #2 Sexiest Movie Moment. In 1995, Andress was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the “100 Sexiest Stars in film history.”