Every Bond Girl Ranked - Worst To Best

The original Bond Girl of the cinematic 007 franchise is still perhaps the most purely famous as far as aesthetics go. Emerging from the sea whilst hypnotically singing “Underneath the Mango Tree”, Ursula Andress’ Honey effortlessly sets the template that would be either followed or subverted in every following Bond adventure.

The picture of innocence on the surface, her flaunting of Doctor No’s strictest trespassing laws on his forbidden island is immediately appealing. Crab Key is a place that most men won’t dare approach, but that won’t stop Honey from looking for valuable shells on a daily basis.

Her sheer confidence in her ability to handle herself is completely endearing, and renders Bond’s trembling ally Quarrel a total wimp in comparison. She even pulls a knife on Bond when he threatens to get too close (an attitude that of course, doesn’t last).

She never went to school but instead learned all she knows from reading the Encyclopedia, starting at “A” when she was 8 and advancing all the way to “T”, which if nothing else is a more interesting factoid than can be said about most other Bond Girls.

Once the bad Doctor himself enters the fray, Honey has little to do other than await Bond’s rescue, but that can’t diminish her intangible iconicity. Her introductory scene is still the most enduring moment from the inaugural Bond adventure, even 55 years later.

Best moment: Her bikini-clad emergence from the Jamaican ocean waves is as mesmerising as it is iconic.

Worst moment: Her wide-eyed shock at Bond’s murder of a prowling guard is thoroughly inconsistent with her earlier story of using a Black Widow spider to inflict an agonising death on her own rapist.