Who is Daniela Bianchi?
Daniela Bianchi is an Italian actress, best known for her role of Bond girl Tatiana Romanova in From Russia with Love (1963). She Finished 1st Runner Up in Miss Universe 1960 Competition, enough to get the attentions of Bond movie producers who chose her over 200 female prospects for the role of Tatiana Romanova.
Bianchi made a number of French and Italian movies after From Russia with Love (1963), the last being Scacco internazionale (1968). One of her later films was OK Connery (1967), which was a James Bond spoof filmed in English (though Bianchi was again dubbed) and starring Sean Connery's brother, Neil Connery.
In 2012, Bianchi appeared in a small role in the documentary film We're Nothing Like James Bond.
Overview
- Nicknames
- Daniella Bianchi
Trivia
- Her voice was dubbed in From Russia with Love (1963); she spoke almost no English and spoke her lines phonetically. Her heavy Italian accent made much of her dialogue difficult to understand, so an English-speaking Italian actress whose accent wasn't so pronounced was hired to re-record her lines.
- She is the youngest to play the role of the leading Bond girl, at the age of 21.
- She beat out more than 200 girls for the leading lady role in the James Bond film From Russia with Love (1963), including Tania Mallet (who later landed a role in another James Bond film Goldfinger (1964)), Elga Andersen, Pia Lindström, Magda Konopka, and Sylva Koscina.
- Appeared opposite Sean Connery in the James Bond classic From Russia with Love (1963), and opposite Neil Connery in Operation Kid Brother (1967) four years later.
- In 1964, she was living in an apartment in Rome and also had a beach house in Sirolo. She owned a sports car and enjoyed swimming and horseback riding. Her friends in Italy were not show business people, but mostly architects, engineers, and executives. She did have a great ambition to be a star in America, but her limited English skills, along with her fear of driving in Los Angeles hurt her chances.