20 Things You Didn’t Know About For Your Eyes Only (1981)

6. “He Had No Head For Heights.”

Roger Moore experienced vertigo whilst filming the rock climbing sequences in Meteora, a mountainous region in central Greece renowned for its Eastern Orthodox monasteries perched high above the valley floor.

Whilst stuntman, Rick Sylvester performed the most dangerous work, dangling over at least a 24-foot drop, the James Bond actor worked over a four-foot drop for close-ups of the Double-0 agent climbing towards Kristatos's mountaintop lair, St. Cyril's Monastery. Nevertheless, they were still filming up a sheer cliff face, so Moore would take a small amount of Valium and drink a tall glass of beer before filming to help him through it.

Sylvester, however, had the fright of his life in performing Double-0 Seven’s fall, dangling from a single rope, down the side of the cliff. The sudden jerk of the rope that broke Bond’s fall could still be fatal, so visual effects supervisor, Derek Meddings developed a system for the stuntman to soften his own fall.

Notwithstanding this safety measure, Sylvester got premonitions of things going wrong, particularly when he saw a nearby cemetery out of the corner of his eye whilst performing the stunt. Not helping matters was the fact that a box at the end of the rope that broke his fall actually resembled a casket!