Get ready for one of those Hollywood stories that’s deeply satisfying and not at all surprising. Pam Grier has been legit since day one, so it’s no shock that she took her swagger into a meeting with the Broccoli family and other Bond producers when they were casting Octopussy and asked them to do better. Although initially reluctant to even take the meeting, Grier showed up and requested the character she was set to play be more than eye candy.
via: New York Post
The screen icon, 73, was up for the titular Bond girl role in the 1983 James Bond installment “Octopussy.” However, the “Foxy Brown” star turned it down in search of better projects.
“My agents had me meet with [producers] the Broccoli family, and I’m going, ‘I’m not available,’ ” Grier told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published Wednesday.
“They looked at me and said, ‘Well, why are you here?’ I go, ‘I don’t know. My agent told me to come meet,’ ” she said.
Grier said she didn’t feel being in the movie would benefit her career.
“I just felt to be a Bond girl would be: What am I going to do? Am I going to help rescue him? Is he rescuing me? A Bond girl is an afterthought, a CliffsNote, perhaps,” she said.
Actress Maud Adams, 77, would go on to play the part of the cunning jewel smuggler.
“Jackie Brown” actress Grier questioned what her character would actually be doing and wondered whether the role was going to be stimulating enough for her.
“I asked, ‘Am I challenging Bond? Am I out to kill him? Will I kill him before he kills me?’ They hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “I gave them other ideas, which were much more profound and interesting than what they were doing.
“I just wanted to do really in-depth character pieces that weren’t predictable,” Grier added. “I turned down everything.”
Last fall, Grier spoke about her decades-long career in Hollywood and revealed that she even wanted to quit the acting biz after “Foxy Brown” was released in 1974.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to continue making films,” Grier told Fox News. “But it turned out I developed an audience. It wasn’t just women, but also artists and filmmakers who loved to see a woman walk in a man’s shoes and be viewed as strong, combative.”
She described how her character was a strong, female hero who “freely expressed herself in a way that wasn’t portrayed.
“I come from the black West, from women who are wholesome, but fierce,” continued the star, who lives in Colorado. “I wanted to bring that into my work. I lassoed people in, and it opened the floodgates.”
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