Ursula Andress as Bond girl Honey Ryder in Dr. No

The Swiss actress Ursula Andress was voted top film siren by men according to a poll by Radio Times, famous as the Bond girl Honey Ryder in the James Bond movie ‘Dr. No’. A poll of 2,000 people voted for their favorite and the top 50 film sirens, spanning over 75 years of cinema, was conducted by Radio Times, the result of which was declared on 6 April 2010. Interestingly, women voted in favor of Audrey Hepburn, famous for her role as the sophisticated Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Andress became world famous as the shell diver Honey Ryder, the center of desire of James Bond (Sean Connery) in Dr. No (1962), the first Bond movie, based on the 1958 Ian Fleming novel of the same name. In a memorable scene, she rises out of the Caribbean Sea in a white bikini (see photo above). The scene made Andress the ‘quintessential’ Bond girl.

"My entrance in the film wearing the bikini on that beautiful beach made me world famous as the Bond girl", she said. The bikini from this ‘classic moment in cinema and Bond history’ was sold for £35,000 at auction in 2001. In 2003, in a UK Survey by Channel 4, her entrance in Dr. No was voted #1 in ‘the 100 Greatest Sexy Moments’. In 2007, Australian series 20 to 1 ranked her entrance in Dr. No as the #2 Sexiest Movie Moment.

Also, Andress won a 1964 Golden Globe award for New Star of the Year for her performance in Dr. No.

Barry Norman, the film reviewer, said, “You seem to have a penchant for naughty girls, women who play hookers: Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and, of course – top of the heap – Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, although in the demure age in which it was made, just before the Swinging Sixties got under way, the nature of her profession couldn’t be specified… In fact there could easily have been a fourth – the Oscar-winning Jane Fonda in Klute, but instead you chose her for Barbarella and, as an impressionable young man who interviewed her in Rome in 1967 when she was actually wearing that erotic costume, I can well understand why. It was an unnerving experience, as you can imagine. I didn’t know where to look never mind what to say. As interviews go, it was a washout. Memorable, though.”