Shirley Eaton (born January 12, 1937) is a British actress who appeared in many British black and white comedies in the 1950s and onwards.

Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson in ‘Goldfinger’.

Early roles include Three Men In A Boat (1956) and Date with Disaster (1957), starring with American Tom Drake. She also worked with The Crazy Gang in Life Is a Circus (1958) and with Mickey Spillane in The Girl Hunters (1963) in which Spillane played his own literary creation Mike Hammer. Later, she starred in an entertaining version of Ten Little Indians (1965), co-starring American singer and actor Fabian. She also appeared in several early Carry On films, but did little TV work (she did appear in three episodes of The Saint opposite Roger Moore).

However, undoubtedly Eaton’s most famous role was that of Jill Masterson in the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger. Her character’s demise, being painted head to toe in gold paint and suffering “skin suffocation”, became an iconic image of the film and inadvertently led to the creation of an urban legend concerning both the method of death and the actress’ own fate. Eaton, very much alive, later appeared in a 2003 episode of the TV documentary series MythBusters to help debunk the legend. However, it should be said that Margaret Nolan, not Eaton, was actually the golden girl who appeared in the film’s well known advertising campaign and title sequence.

In any case, the film made Eaton a star; she even appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in her gold-painted persona. After Goldfinger, Eaton made a few more films including the notorious The Million Eyes of Su-Muru, before she retired from acting to raise her family.