She never had any aspirations to be an actress when she was growing up in France in the 1940s.
But Claudine Auger, who has died in Paris aged 78, following a long period of illness, became internationally renowned after appearing in the James Bond film Thunderball.
Ms Auger originally started a career as a model and was considered the height of sophistication in the late 1950s.
She represented France and was the runner-up in Miss World in 1958, but several people at the event told her she was a natural in front of the camera and it wasn’t long before the film industry came calling.
Auger became the first French actress to play James Bond’s lover in the 007 saga when she starred as Dominique “Domino” Derval in Thunderball, alongside Sean Connery, which was the fourth movie in the successful franchise.
It was later revealed that the production team had rewritten the character for Auger. Domino was initially supposed to be Italian, but she became French.
“Bond girls” were rarely given recognition for their acting talents, with casting directors and audiences at the time tending to focus on their physical appearance and swimsuits.
However, Auger told a TV interviewer in 1965 that she had approached the role as she would if she were “playing Moliere” at a prestigious theatre.
After making her name in Thunderball, Auger went on to have a fruitful career in French and Italian cinema throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Among her best known films were the crime thrillers, That Man George, and Flic Story, and the romantic tragedy A Few Hours of Sunlight.
In 1994, Auger appeared in the British television series The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, in “The Three Gables” as Isadora Klein, in one of the last episodes of that series starring Jeremy Brett.
Her personal life rarely impinged on her professional career. But in 1959, aged 18, she married writer-director Pierre Gaspard-Huit.
They later divorced, but she subsequently married British businessman Peter Brent in the 1980s. He predeceased her in 2008.
The couple had one child, Jessica Claudine Brent.
