Prior to Monica Bellucci becoming the acclaimed actor that we know her as today, she first worked as a fashion model for luxury brands, including Dolce & Gabbana, Cartier and Dior, before making the switch the starring in Italian movies and later French and American features.
Her film debut arrived in 1991 with the comedy La Riffa, and a year later, she starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The following decades saw Bellucci feature in several acclaimed movies, including The Apartment, Under Suspicion, The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
In 2015, Bellucci made history by becoming the oldest actor to play a Bond girl in a James Bond movie. The film is the 24th in the famous spy movie series, starring Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ben Wishaw and Ralph Fiennes alongside Bellucci, directed by Sam Mendes.
When Bellucci spoke with the Academy Award website A-Frame, she reflected on the five defining roles and was happy to admit that her performance in Spectre ought to be considered amongst some of her most important, largely for the fact that it was a rarity for an actor her age to be a ‘Bond girl’.
“I was 50 years old, so when my agent called me, saying, ‘Listen, some people want to meet you for Spectre,’ I said, ‘Who am I going to play? M?!’ Actually, it was a revolutionary thing that a 50-year-old woman would be in a film like that,” Bellucci said.
The actor continued: “And then, everybody said so many things because I was 50 years old in a James Bond movie! It was an experience. I really enjoyed working with Sam Mendes – he’s great – so it was a very beautiful experience to be in that movie.”
It’s indeed a genuine feat for an actor over the age of 50 to land the highly-coveted role of playing a Bond girl in a James Bond movie, and it lent Spectre all the more nuance. After all, we’d seen scores upon scores of younger actors in the role, so Bellucci’s appearance perhaps marked the beginning of a real change in the famous franchise.
Bellucci had previously discussed her role with The Sunday Times, anticipating the fact that Spectre would be seen as “revolutionary”. She said: “For the first time in history, James Bond is going to have a story with a mature woman. The concept is revolutionary.”
