Grace Jones opens up about her time with 007 in new memoir

Model, singer and actress Grace Jones, who played the deadly May Day in Roger Moore's swansong 1985 adventure 'A View To A Kill', has published a memoir that includes recollections of her time with the James Bond series.

Jones writes at length in the book about the abuse she suffered growing up in Jamaica at the hands of her strict step-grandfather. She ended up using his terrifying glare in her performance. She writes, “He taught me something about how to demand attention, but I could turn it into a cartoon, which takes the sting out of it for me.”

Her costar might have taken those withering glances to heart. "Roger Moore said to me, ‘Please stop looking at me like that, with such venom.’ It made him really uncomfortable,” writes Jones. “Roger Moore was such a softie, although he did have incredibly hard legs and the stiffest hair.”

A View to a Kill was by far Jones’ biggest role up to that point, and she had precious little acting experience to fall back on. She got some help from Moore during filming, particularly during one scene when Jones just couldn’t act surprised upon discovering Bond in May Day’s bed. Jones writes, "That kind of pretending I found a little troubling. I couldn’t look surprised. Eventually Roger stuck something stupid on his head, and I was really surprised to see it, so I looked surprised, and that was the take they used.”

During Jones’ dialogue looping sessions, her clothes were rustling in the vocal booth and getting picked up on the microphones. So the star — known for being carefree about nudity — simply took them off. “I did my lines nude, ” Jones writes.

'I'll Never Write My Memoirs' by Grace Jones is out now (Amazon USA)

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