Bond's beauties

Ursula Andress (left) as bikini-clad Honey Ryder in "Dr. No," Rosamund Pike (center) as Miranda Frost in "Die Another Day," and Grace Jones as May Day in "A View to a Kill."

Camille may be the first Bond girl to keep it strictly business with her 007, but some of her predecessors can claim equally remarkable distinctions. Among the most memorable actresses:

URSULA ANDRESS

Honey Ryder, "Dr. No" (1962)

Let's get real. Forget the raft of pretenders to the throne. Barbara Bach? Oh please. The queen of Bond girls was, is, and always will be Ursula Andress, the Swiss beauty who left Rachel Welch with the horseshoe crabs when it comes to bodacious pulchritude. Tall, tawny, and ferocious, she was the first Bond girl and still the best. In one of the great screen debuts, Ursula took our breath away in "Dr. No" as she emerged from the water like some dazzling ocean creature onto a powder white beach in a white bikini and a knife that inexplicably remained attached to her waist. Her name was the sublime Honey Ryder, and what made her memorable was her primitiveness. She wasn't great on Diderot and definitely not the girl for James Bond to talk to about telemetry. But then he never ever had that in mind.

- SAM ALLIS

DIANA RIGG

Tracy Di Vicenzo, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1969)

The brain is not a body part customarily associated with the species Bond girl cinemanis. Which is why Diana Rigg, with her gimlet intellect and amber gaze, was such an ideal choice as Bond girl for "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." It's the most anomalous of canonical Bond movies twice over. Not only is "Service" the sole 007 picture with a one-off Bond, the formerly unknown and soon-to-be-forgotten George Lazenby. Bond, that supreme player of the field, actually weds. Of course, with Rigg as bride, how could even a male as fickle as 007 resist? Alas, she dies in the movie. She pretty much had to. Otherwise Rigg's inner Emma Peel would have soon enough emerged - and kicked Bond's double-oh-timing butt.

- MARK FEENEY

MAUD ADAMS

Octopussy, "Octopussy" (1983)

Bearing what is easily the most lubriciously surreal name in all Bond-age - what is an Octopussy? Do we really want to know? - Adams actually makes her second appearance in a 007 film (her first being Andrea Anders in 1974's "The Man With the Golden Gun"). This one's the keeper, though. Lifting off (way off) from the original Ian Fleming short story, "Octopussy" casts the Swedish supermodel as a high priestess of a cult of octopus-worshiping beauties who live on an island in the Indian Ocean when they're not touring the world in a traveling circus. No wonder Roger Moore's eyebrows are arching through his hairpiece; yours will too.

- TY BURR

KIM BASINGER

Domino Petachi, "Never Say Never Again" (1983)

Long before she became Alec Baldwin's ex, Kim Basinger was a Bond femme named Domino. In the 1983 film "Never Say Never Again," Basinger gave a good performance as the mistress and pupil of a Hungarian millionaire who is nuclear-warhead happy. During a lively tango sequence, then Bondsman Sean Connery swept Basinger off her feet, and both spun and turned like professionals. As they danced, Basinger maintained a steely composure (she's stirred but not shaken) when Connery informed her that her boyfriend had a role in her brother's death. (The film is left off "official" Bond movie lists because it was not made by the EON film team.)

- JOHNNY DIAZ

GRACE JONES

May Day, "A View to a Kill" (1986)

Jones is more Bond sub-villain than Bond girl. Then again, this movie is more sub-Bond than Bond. In any case, all eyes are on Jones, who remains the most subversive casting in the franchise. Her assignments include standing next to chief villain Christopher Walken and lifting a grown man over her head and throwing him across the screen. For the record, she's more interesting than conventional Bond girl Tanya Roberts, whom Roger Moore's 007 barely notices in this movie. Jones, on the other hand, is dangerous, melodramatic, and droll. When she walks into a room and finds a 57-year-old Bond naked in her bed, he says "I see you're a woman of few words." "What is there to say?" she asks.

- WESLEY MORRIS

MICHELLE YEOH

Colonel Wai Lin, "Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997)

Bond girl? Colonel Wai Lin rockets through "Tomorrow" with feet flying and hands chopping up the bad guys. Sure, Wai Lin, played by Michelle Yeoh ("Memoirs of a Geisha," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon") takes her turn churning the sheets with 007, played by Pierce Brosnan. But after the two find themselves handcuffed together, navigating a motorcycle chase and leaping from a tall building, it's she, not Bond, who finally picks the lock. (You'd think a secret agent who dismantles WMDs with a snap of his manicured fingers could have busted loose from a pair of cuffs, but no.) Then she promptly shackles him in place. "I work alone!" she sneers as she sprints away, having had enough of the Bond boy.

- THOMASINE BERG

ROSAMUND PIKE

Miranda Frost, "Die Another Day" (2002)

Halle Berry gets the orange bikini and the leather catsuit, but Pike gets the better role - duplicitous Bond girl. As the aptly named Miranda Frost, Pike is all chilly reserve in fur, silver, and gray. The right-hand woman to effete uber-villain Gustav Graves persuades Bond she's on his side long enough for them to share the night in a huge swan-shaped bed of ice. She thaws nicely, however, in time to battle Berry in a girls-gone-wild swordfight on an out-of-control jet.

- SCOTT HELLER