Fiona Volpe, played by Luciana Paluzzi, is a secondary villains in the James Bond film Thunderball. A deadly assassin in SPECTRE’s execution branch, she becomes NATO pilot Major Francois Derval’s mistress in the operation to steal the Vulcan and its precious cargo of two nuclear missiles, which SPECTRE plans to use for a blackmail operation.

Luciana Paluzzi as Fiona Volpe in ‘Thunderball’.

Fiona volpe organises Derval’s murder and kills Count Lippe by destroying his car with the missile launcher on her BSA motorcycle, after his numerous attempts to kill Bond fail. Volpe is later seen pushing the motorcycle into a pond, presumably to hide evidence.

Bond meets Volpe while hitchhiking, and she startles Bond with her fast driving. They soon arrive at their hotel in Nassau. Fiona holds Paula Caplan captive, but Caplan commits suicide by taking cyanide before revealing anything. Meanwhile she waits for Bond in his bathtub, she seduces him and they have sex. While dressing for the Junkanoo, Volpe lets in Vargas and another one of Emilio Largo’s henchmen to hold Bond captive.

Bond manages to flee Volpe and hide in the Junkanoo, but they soon catch up at the Kiss Kiss Club. Volpe approaches Bond as he is dancing with another woman. Assuming Volpe is his wife (possibly due to her ring), the woman leaves, and the pair begin slow-dancing, while one of the other henchmen hides behind a curtain and aims a gun at Bond. Bond notices in time and spins Volpe into the path of the bullet, which pierces her spine and kills her. Leaving Volpe’s corpse in a chair saying, “She’s just dead”, and the other henchmen disorganised by shock, Bond exits.

The death of Fiona has been a source of debate by Bond film fans for years, due to the ambiguous nature in which her killing is filmed. To some, Bond intentionally uses Fiona as a human shield to protect himself against a bullet, which would make Fiona the first woman in the Bond film series to be killed by 007. Others, however, interpret the scene as Fiona being accidentally shot by her own men as she and Bond are dancing.

In the remake Never Say Never Again, also starring Sean Connery, this character is slightly modified as Fatima Blush.

See also:

• Bond girls
• Bond henchmen