Claudine Auger

French actress Claudine Auger never surpassed her greatest onscreen impression, as Bond girl Domino in "Thunderball," though she continued to act, mostly in foreign film productions, for another 30 years. She was both Miss France Monde and a Miss World runner-up in 1958, and when she was just 18 years old, she married 41-year-old Pierre Gaspard-Huitt, a film director and writer. While training at the Paris Drama Conservatory, she first appeared in bit parts in films including Gaspard-Huitt's "Christine" and Jean Cocteau's "Testament of Orpheus." After being spotted on a beach in the Bahamas, she was encouraged to audition for "Thunderball," and she impressed the producers enough for them to rewrite the part for a French woman instead of the original Italian (though ultimately her lines would be dubbed when her English was deemed inaudible). The Bond film led to a "Playboy" spread and a TV appearance on the "A Bob Hope Comedy Special," though her future work would be far less visible to American audiences. Interesting foreign fare on Auger's resume includes "Triple Cross," with Christopher Plummer, and "The Killing Game," about a wealthy man enacting the adventures he reads in a comic strip. Auger's lesser-known pictures include giallo thrillers such as "Twitch of the Death Nerve" and "Black Belly of the Tarantula." Claudine Auger died December 18, 2019 at the age of 78.