D'Abo

When Britain's best and brightest were feted at this year's Cannes Film Festival, blonde and bright Maryam d'Abo was seated at a gala banquet between Prince Charles and the evening's distinguished guest of honor, Sir Alec Guinness. Why Maryam? Well, not simply because she was born in England, raised in France. More to the point, the prince introduced her with appreciative accuracy as the lovely new star of The Living Daylights, latest in a quarter-century string of James Bond extravaganzas that have grossed well over a billion. Most were filmed in England. That's how the British Empire strikes back and brings a celestial body named D'Abo to dine with royalty on the Riviera. The journey from relative obscurity to woman-of-the-year celebrity has not been such a long one for 26-year-old Maryam. During a fast lunch at a swank London restaurant just prior to her departure for Cannes, she touched upon the highlights of a career that started around the age of five. "I was always rather shy but went to school in France, where my mother was a representative for UNICEF greeting cards. Somehow or other, I'd wind up in the spotlight as part of various promotions, on live TV with Danny Kaye or sitting on Peter Ustinov's knee." In person, she's alert, soft-spoken, with a mere trace of Continental accent, brown-eyed, usually wearing little or no make-up and the kind of casually chic army clothes that probably go for the price of a light armored tank. On stage, she has played Cyrano's Roxane in French and considers herself a serious actress. Thus, it follows that the former Bond leading lady she most admires is Diana (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) Rigg, who has remained a top star of movies, TV and theater since her performance as 007's only genuine bride. D'Abo sees herself in Living Daylights as a Bond belle with a difference. "Despite some notable exceptions, most of the previous Bond girls were like puppets. But it's 1987, and the girl I play is no longer just a sex object, one of those tits-and-bum characters. She's a real person, a musician. Also, she's actually the only woman in the picture Bond sleeps with. That's new, fidelity. These are different times."

She now thinks he's aces, but Maryam admits she'd scarcely heard of Timothy Dalton until she was cast opposite him as a Czechoslovakian cellist named Kara. "I never dreamed I'd play the lead in a Bond movie. Several years ago, I auditioned for A View to a Kill, for the role that Fiona Fullerton did. My hair was shorter then, and they thought I looked too young. Then, in February 1986, I was called to do a screen test with another James Bond--who didn't get the (text concluded on page 166)D'Abo(continued from page 136) part, obviously. But I did." She won't name the 007 who never was, except to say he wasn't Pierce Brosnan. Anyway, D'Abo deems Dalton an ideal choice.

B.B., or before Bond, you might have glimpsed her, if you looked fast, playing small roles in White Nights and Out of Africa. She had a fatter part as a French model in a major television series, Master of the Game, did some TV commercials and had a nude scene in a 1984 American-in-Paris romance called Until September. "Karen Allen was the star. I played the mistress of the married man she loves, but my whole part was cut out--the nudity, everything...."

Shedding a few threads to appear on the pages of Playboy, in Maryam's view, was just another way of testing herself, which she is determined to do. Just back from locations for Living Daylights, she'd experienced plenty of testing as well as tripping. "Tim and I had a love scene on the Riesenrad, the giant amusement-park wheel in Vienna, that was nice. My very worst moment was when we slid down a snowy Alp--together--in a cello case. Working with Playboy was pure enjoyment compared with that, certainly a lot less dangerous. Marilyn Grabowski [Playboy's West Coast Photo Editor] and [Contributing Photographer] Steve Wayda developed the concept relating to characters in earlier Bond movies. Steve really understood what I was about, which made it fun."

Less fun, Maryam allows, was trying to get the shot (see opening page of this feature) in which she sports an eye patch like the one worn by Emilio Largo, the villain in Thunderball, and cuddles a Persian cat, a ringer for one cherished by the evil Ernst Stavro Blofeld, played by Donald Pleasence in You Only Live Twice. "It's not easy to work with a cat when you're not wearing very much, but we managed. This animal has a really fascinating family history. She's the actual granddaughter of the cat that was Donald Pleasence's pet in the movie.

"Mostly, if I was uncomfortable with anything we tried in the photos, we'd just go on to something else. Although I had a little trouble posing naked on the bonnet--I guess you say hood--of the Aston Martin. I kept falling off the car." Her favorite bit in the gallery of Bond memorabilia was dousing herself with Bollinger champagne while clad in a terrycloth wrap, a sopping-wet hommage to Sean Connery's beefcake towel shot in From Russia with Love.

An hour after lunch, Maryam was whisked across London by limo for another change of costume. While a camera crew bustled in a Hyde Park hotel suite, setting up a TV interview for The Playboy Channel, she disappeared into an adjoining room with her favorite make-up/hair stylist and a tote bag full of surprises. When she emerged in 30 minutes or so, coifed and sleek and assured, wearing a trim black suit with exactly the proper degree of plunge, the recently scrubbed-clean, street-smart London gamine looked every inch a movie star. Maryam smiled. "Is this all right? Will I do?"

It seems safe to predict that any charmer who can make James Bond monogamous will do very well, indeed.

Bond's new lady is a sex kitten so seductive, she transforms fickle 007 into a one-woman man.

Maryam d'Abo, who plays a cellist in Daylights, works tantalizing variations on Bondage. Opposite, says she, "I'm draped à la Grace Jones in A View to a Kill--but dropping a hint that Diamonds Are Forever."

Remember the shot of Connery in a towel? Maryam goes Bond one better. "The champagne's on me."

No, no, no. She has no nude scene in Living Daylights, so Maryam compensates with a memorable tribute to Goldfinger. "I quite like this one; the gold was sprayed on."