I was numbed by love and, at the time, I believed everything Jean-Paul said. Love weakens you. It makes you blind. It’s definitely an alien feeling, like you’ve been abducted. I turned down a role in Blade Runner because I was weak in the knees in love. It wasn’t because I didn’t like the script. I had so much respect for Jean-Paul, and I listened to him about what I should be doing and always asked for his advice.
Jean-Paul wanted me only to work with him. Especially if I was going to do a film. He wanted me to do a film only with him, before anyone else. He always wanted to direct, and it was me who pushed him. We pushed each other, because we were artistic sparring partners. Jean-Paul didn’t believe in himself as a director at first, and I pushed him to try. He gained his confidence, and once he had it, he didn’t want me to work with another director.
I knew he would be adamant that it was a bad move to appear in Blade Runner. I immediately said no, before I had even read the script and before I had even asked him. Jean-Paul was always in my head as I made decisions. When he heard about the film, he said what I thought he would say—it would be too commercial, and I would become too Hollywood. I would become a sellout.
That was the worst thing to say to me. I was moving with artists who really were underground—known, even successful, but rooted in the avant-garde, experimental, and definitely not commercial—and you felt that you were all in it together and that to accept mainstream work was an unforgivable betrayal of some essential nourishing, progressive spirit. You felt part of a club, even if you didn’t get together every night, and there was an understanding of what that meant, and what you didn’t do in terms of accepting degraded commercial work.
When I told Jean-Paul, even though I had already said no, he couldn’t resist going on about why it was such a bad thing to do. He told me that I would be exploited—my biggest fear. It was like joining another cult where you are told what to do, even as you pretend what you do is all about not being told what to do.
One of those things you didn’t do at the time was a big budget Hollywood movie, even one based on an acid-tripping, time-bending 1960s science-fiction book by paranoid psychedelic activist Philip K. Dick. Turning down such jobs was definitely the spirit of that time, and it’s a spirit I have found difficult to shake off even as the world has gotten less discerning and discriminating.
I still had the script, though, and the night after I had passed on the part, I was flying to Paris. I decided to read it on the plane. I absolutely loved it. It was set in a universe I visited a lot in my work and play. As soon as I landed I decided I would call them back and reverse my decision. I was too late. Overnight they had cast someone else.
The director, Ridley Scott, must have really wanted me, because the part they offered me was bigger when he was thinking of me than how it appeared in the film. The character of Zohra, the Snake Lady they wanted me to play, had shrunk in the finished film. I think there would have been more of that character if I had accepted. Of course, everyone in that film, which was so much more cult and cool than commercial, went on to be really successful, their integrity enhanced by being in such a movie. The film’s reputation only increases with time.
I should have made that decision myself, rather than being caught up in Jean-Paul’s rivalry with Ridley Scott in the world of commercials. At the time, they were both at about the same level, moving from art direction and TV ads into film. Ridley was slightly ahead, and I got tangled up in Jean-Paul’s jealousy. If I had seen the film Ridley had made a couple of years before, The Duellists, which was fabulous, I wouldn’t have thought for a moment about accepting. I said no without reading the script, which was very stupid of me.
I found out years later when I hung out with Ridley’s brother, Tony, that Tony had fought so hard for me to be in one of his movies, The Last Boy Scout with Bruce Willis, but he just didn’t have the power. It was for a character called Cory. A small part, because she dies quickly, so she has to be memorable, so that people remember her. Her death sets everything up in the rest of the story. He wanted me; the producers wanted Halle Berry. They won. In a fight between the director and the producer, usually the producer wins.
Ridley never asked me to work with him again. We saw each other a few times at functions and events, and I never bought it up. Tony said that Ridley fell in love with Joanna Cassidy, the actress they ended up choosing to play Snake Lady in Blade Runner. Later, they split up. He associated me with the heartbreak, so he never considered me again for any of his films. Tony said, “That’s why he hasn’t called you.”
Later, I made the conscious decision after passing on Blade Runner that I would try the kind of movie I had turned down, the kind Jean-Paul had warned me against. I would get my feet wet. I don’t like regrets, but I did regret that I had not taken that role, and was struck by how quickly things had moved after I had said no. Within a day, someone else had been given the role. I had no chance to say, I’ve changed my mind. I reminded myself of my motto—try everything once. Because Jean-Paul’s influence was so great when we were together, I had not followed my own credo.
I was intrigued by what it was like in that supposedly forbidden and corrupt Hollywood world. I felt I was made of stern enough stuff not to lose my head and be won over by false promises and fake charm. I wanted the experience, at least once, in the same way I had wanted to be a Playboy Bunny.
The James Bond producers had really wanted me to be in a Bond movie, because in the 1980s, with the franchise threatened by changing times, they were chasing fashion and looking to reach a wider audience by involving more pop and rock. They had wanted me to be in Octopussy, in the title role, played by Maud Adams, but there was some anxiety about having a black woman as a villain. A Bond movie is, for all the appearance of sex and violence, a fundamentally very conservative franchise.
They came back and offered me a part in the next one, A View to a Kill, the fourteenth Bond film. This time I was ready, and I followed my own instincts. I battled with memories of what Jean-Paul had said about Blade Runner: They are just going to exploit you. I wanted to prove to Jean-Paul that I could be in a movie without losing my integrity.
It was what I always believed would happen when I went from modeling into music, that the musical door would open out onto the acting doors. Music was going to take me to theater and film. Acting was always where I felt I was going to end up. Here was my chance.
That’s why I studied with Warren Robertson, on the recommendation of Jessica Lange. She’d gone to his classes, and people like James Earl Jones, Diane Keaton, Christopher Walken, and Viggo Mortensen studied under him. He made me realize that it was about having absolute confidence in your own ability. He said, “I am going to teach you how you hold your own regardless of what everyone else is doing. How to find that one thing that can anchor you and your performance. Concentrate on yourself, and everything else will work around you with its own momentum.”
He encouraged me to find an inner story. A memory that was all mine. May Day, my character in A View to a Kill, was very much of the attitude that if you messed with her, she was going to kill you. And to get to that point I did think of my step-grandfather. In the Bond film, playing the ruthless dominatrix in catsuits, mad hats, and flamboyant capes, taming a wild horse with a sneer, parachuting from the Eiffel Tower, I began to emulate Mas P, to copy his intense scowl. It’s there in the stare of May Day.
I didn’t really think of it at the time, but I can see it now. I can be as scary as he was to me because I had him as a kind of role model, or at least as an adult showing me how a person got his own way. He taught me something about how to demand attention, but I could turn it into a cartoon, which takes the sting out of it for me. I can see it now in old pictures of him, this force in the eyes that I use in various ways as a performer. I realize now why that look has been second nature for me—I saw it all the time; it was part of how he controlled us. He tried to intimidate me, a vulnerable little girl, keeping me in check. That was my way of dealing with this monster—turn it into something he would have been horrified by. I threw it back into his face even if he never knew it.
Roger Moore said to me, “Please stop looking at me like that, with such venom.” It made him really uncomfortable. I was a killer. I was willing to kill. In my real life, I would only do that for my son. More for blood than for a lover. Generally I would hurt myself before killing anyone. Roger Moore was such a softie, although he did have incredibly hard legs and the stiffest hair, and he was so relaxed about the whole thing—some would say too relaxed—that he didn’t like me glaring at him off set like I really was a henchwoman and he really was the spy I was determined to kill.
I was on such a strict schedule, and it could become quite taxing. I had to be in the car by four forty-five in the morning. When I was doing James Bond in Britain, I met Danny Huston, the son of legendary film director John Huston. He was directing the “making of” film for the Santa Claus movie where Dudley Moore played Patch, one of Santa’s elves. It was his first professional job, and he was editing at Pinewood near the set where we were filming. He was only about twenty-three. We had a very secret affair. I was very good at secrets. It was good to have some privacy. It was nice to get up to something that no one knew anything about. Danny and I didn’t really get involved at first; we just started hanging out. I would go to his editing room and have a little joint. It was a little bit of wild time outside the discipline of making the film.
They didn’t know who was going to be my lover and boss, the film’s main villain—at first it was going to be David Bowie. He declined, because he said he didn’t want to be in a film where for most of it his character would be played by a stand-in doing the stunts. He also wanted to see the script, and for a long time they weren’t ready. They then asked Mick Jagger, because they definitely wanted this to be a rock ’n’ roll MTV Bond. He didn’t want to do it either, and they were struggling with getting a male rock star for the villain.
The role was eventually taken by Christopher Walken, styled in the film to be very Thin White Duke Bowie—lean, mean, blond, and suavely narcissistic. Chris was very cool and friendly on set, but it took a little bit of time to get close to him. I had a crush on Chris in real life, but for the sake of the role I wanted to keep my distance. I was totally committed to him as my boss, but I decided to play it that when we had a love scene it would feel intense to me, that I would really feel the moment. Plus, I was really very shy in this world.
At our first meeting the director, John Glen, had said, “You are the actors. You do the acting, and anything you do wrong, I will fix it in the editing room.” He was very much an action director and not really interested in the mechanics of acting. The actors were left to it.
I interpreted his speech about the editing room as meaning: If you are no good, you will be cut. Most of you will disappear onto the cutting-room floor. I remember being incredibly scared. Fuck, what do I do now? I didn’t like the thought that I would be left to my own devices.
I said to my teacher, Warren Robertson, that the director was not going to help me much as an actor. I was on my own, and I didn’t think I was experienced enough to deal with that, especially as part of what was such a brand, and such an industrial process. I wanted to be super-professional without taking it too seriously. I just wanted to get on set and push a button and be in character. I had wanted Warren to teach me this, to help me work out how to do it.
Warren told me to go to Chris for help. He had taught Chris. And Chris was very helpful. We would slowly get to know each other. In the script, we had a sex scene together, and that becomes an important part of the dynamic. You know the sex scene is coming. Everyone on the set knows the sex scene is coming. The tension builds up. I didn’t want Dolph there. He is very Scandinavian about sex—he wasn’t the jealous type. He was very open, and that openness bound us together, and was never the direct cause of any problems we might have had. But I didn’t want him there while I filmed the love scene with Chris. There was another reason, really. Dolph was beginning to try acting, fairly informally at first, and there was a little friction because it seemed he might be hanging on to my coattails. I felt, for the sake of my Bond character and her single-mindedness, that I needed to be on my own. I was feeling nervous about the scene. It would have been too distracting having Dolph around, as if this was about him as much as me.
The sex scene with Chris involved nothing more than some passionate kissing, but it ended up so intense that it was edited out when the film was shown on certain South American airlines. Chris and I managed to generate some genuine sexual tension—his wife said to me, “If I didn’t know you were in love with Dolph, I would have been jealous.”
I was the first Bond girl to help create her own costume. Usually it was Cubby Broccoli’s wife, Barbara, who was in control of the clothing, but I thought that a part of why they asked me was because of my own style. I knew what I wanted, how I was going to look as a Bond girl. I was way ahead of the game. I looked at Disney colors, because I figured being a Bond girl was like being in a cartoon. I picked out every piece of fabric. I took in tips I had learned from Issey and Kenzo, and had direct input from one of my other favorite designers who became a friend, Azzedine Alaïa, but Bowie and Jagger were right in thinking that you have trouble operating with any kind of soul, or intimate energy, inside such an industrial production. You are a small cog, as huge pieces of machinery are dropped in around you. Your main job is to try to make sure you are not crushed by all this falling machinery.
The Bond team was amazing. There were bits I was afraid of, but I did the best I could to make sure I looked in control. I watched all the previous movies. I developed the character so that you would know her even if she was miles away, hidden in the shadows. I took in all my experience of being me, wearing certain clothes, pulling certain faces. It’s a Bond film, but the way I looked at it, I wanted it to be the best cartoon I had ever seen. Take it extremely seriously up to a point, and then stop. Take the film for what it was, and try to have a great time. I also wanted to make sure that people didn’t look at me in the film and say, “Well, that’s just Grace Jones.” I wanted people to think of me as May Day.
I got on great with Roger Moore. He was very funny and easygoing. He helped me a lot, because I wanted so much to be good. I was a worrier. I worried that I didn’t know what I was doing. When I got stuck he would humor me.
I remember I had to walk in on Roger as Bond in a scene, and I was meant to look surprised to see him alive. It is very difficult to be surprised to see someone who shouldn’t be there when you know he is going to be there. We had done three takes already, and I wasn’t experienced enough to work out how to look surprised when I knew exactly what was about to happen. I know he’s there! I read it in the script, and we have rehearsed it and done some takes. He’s there in bed; how can I be surprised? That kind of pretending I found a little troubling. I couldn’t look surprised! Eventually Roger stuck something stupid on his head, and I was really surprised to see it, so I looked surprised, and that was the take they used.
It seemed appropriate that I appear in a James Bond film, because of the connection between Bond; his maker, Ian Fleming; Jamaica; and Chris Blackwell. Chris’s mother, Blanche, was for many years the mistress of Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond books. He visited Jamaica during the war, attending a naval conference exploring the potential presence of Nazi U-boats in the Caribbean Sea, and he fell in love with the island’s peace and silence and what he described as its “cut-offness” from the world. He was determined to come back after the war, and in 1946, he built a holiday home in Jamaica on the north coast near the quiet banana port of Oracabessa. The twisting, tree-lined roads hugging the coast alongside the sea would have reminded him of English country lanes, but with the addition from paradise of the glittering, sometimes choppy, purposeful sea, the soft white sand, and the neon-blue sky. He found fifteen acres of land, an old donkey racecourse on a secret coral beach protected by a reef. He called the modest, minimal bungalow he built Goldeneye. It was where he wrote all fourteen of the Bond books—without Jamaica, a universe away from the low-sky postwar grayness of London, there would be no Bond. He loved birds, and one of his favorite books was a reference book, Birds of the West Indies, by James Bond.
Chris worked as a location scout on the first Bond film, Dr. No, when some scenes were shot in Jamaica, including the classic scene where Ursula Andress’s Honey Rider, wearing a belted white bikini, walks out of the sea—a private beach called Laughing Water—suggestively carrying her conch shell. May Day was a descendent of Honey Rider. We all belonged to the same family.
Chris bought the Goldeneye estate in 1976 after trying to get Bob Marley to buy it, and turned it into a resort that protected and showcased the Fleming history. Fleming’s writing desk, where he would write the Bond books, is still there. Elizabeth Taylor, Charlie Chaplin, and Sophia Loren used to holiday with Ian Fleming; now it is Jay Z, Johnny Depp, and Bono who come to stay, and in between there was Mick and Bianca.
Ian Fleming loved to snorkel, and one day he was snorkeling in the water of his private beach at the foot of the cliff where his house was built. He swam out to a small rock that poked out of the warm blue sea like something human frozen in time, and spotted an octopus just under the water’s surface. This became the setting for a short story he wrote, “Octopussy.”
I have visited Goldeneye many times, and spent some time there working on this book, because of the way the place clears the head and revives the soul. I have taken my mom and dad there, who agree with Chris that the place has a magical atmosphere. Many who visit plant a tree there, labeled with their name, helped by Ian Fleming’s original gardener, Ramsey Dacosta. I have planted a tree there, alongside those planted by the Clintons, Princess Margaret, Bono, and Pierce Brosnan, and I love to see how quickly and confidently it has grown over the years. One or two others nearby have not fared as well.
Noël Coward was one of the first visitors to Goldeneye after it was built. Coward was once described as fourteen men in one; I often feel I am fourteen in one as well. He adored the location, although not so much the modest house Fleming had built—with no hot water or glass windows. He first built a home called Blue Harbour, five miles along the coast from Goldeneye, but that became such a social whirlpool he felt the need for a quieter, less accessible place. He had a simpler house built farther up the hill, in the local, spartan tradition, on the site of an old pirate lookout that was originally called, unsurprisingly, Look Out. You can see the Blue Mountains in the distance across Port Maria Bay, one of the longest beaches on the island, where Europeans first came ashore. His new house was kept apart from the rest of the island by rugged narrow lanes tightly winding upward under sparkling canopies of trees and bushes, each leaf laid sleekly in place, a true, divine hideaway.
Noël Coward renamed his island home Firefly, because of the lightning bugs that covered the ground. This was my nickname when I was a child. One of Chris Blackwell’s companies now maintains Firefly as a museum. The place is still as hard to find as it once was, close to what it was like when stars, royalty, and politicians would visit. Chris talks of having tea with Noël Coward once—another of his early mentors—with Burt Bacharach and Marlene Dietrich. It all seems to be part of what I called the Giant Octopus, where huge tentacles stretch out around the world—and my life—generating a tangle of coincidences, associations, and connections that spring up and multiply as fast as anything growing on Jamaica.