20 Things You Didn’t Know About For Your Eyes Only (1981)
4. “I’ll Buy You An Ice Cream.”
Roger Moore turned 53 years of age whilst filming For Your Eyes Only and a conscious effort was made to avoid the awkward topic of his Bond romancing women who were far younger than him.
The leading Bond Girl, Melina Havelock is focused on avenging the murder of her parents and only succumbs to James Bond’s charms once the mission has been completed. On the other hand, Lynn-Holly Johnson’s nubile young ice skating Olympic hopeful, Bibi Dahl literally throws herself at Double-0 Seven, forcing him to deflate her ambitions by offering to buy her an ice cream instead. He is much more at ease with Lisl, who fits into the mould of the more traditional Bond Girl.
The irony is that, whilst the filmmakers went to great pains to make Melina seem more mature than Bibi, Carole Bouquet is actually only just over a year older than Lynn-Holly Johnson, being 23 years old at the time of filming, whereas Johnson was 22.
For his part, the film’s co-screenwriter, Richard Maibaum felt that director, John Glen mishandled the love story between Bond and Melina that he had crafted for the film, as he had intended that Bond should have been trying to romance Melina all along.