13 Movie Hoaxes That Completely Fooled Everyone

13. The Actress Painted Gold In Goldfinger Died For Real

We begin with one of the most pervasive movie myths of all time, and one that was popularly accepted to be true for several decades.

1964's classic Bond flick Goldfinger features a sequence in which 007 (Sean Connery) discovers the corpse of Bond girl Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) covered in gold paint. In the movie, painting her entire body gold resulted in her dying from "skin suffocation", with the implication being that the body needs to "breathe" by leaving at least a small portion of the skin unpainted.

This led to a rumour shortly after the film's release that Eaton actually died for real, compounded by her sparse film credits post-Goldfinger and eventual retirement in 1970.

The legend held strong well into the late 1990s, when worldwide Internet adoption confirmed to the masses that this wasn't the case. While Eaton was shooting her scenes for the movie, a doctor was reportedly on standby to ensure her safety, and you can at least appreciate the logic of the myth, especially 50 years ago, even if it's ultimately total nonsense.