Bond girl: Tatiana Romanova

Photo © EON, United Artists, Danjaq LLC

Bond girl: Tatiana Romanova
007 Film: From Russia With Love (1963)

Actress: Daniela Bianchi

Bond connection: Tatiana Romanova is introduced as a corporal in Soviet Army Intelligence, assigned to work in the Soviet Embassy in Istanbul as a cipher clerk. Her commanding officer is Rosa Klebb — in the screenplay adaptation, she is secretly an agent for SPECTRE — who manipulates her into believing that she is on an important mission for her country, when she is in fact merely a pawn in the terrorist organization's latest bid to destroy the British Secret Service. Once in Istanbul, she contacts Ali Kerim Bey and tells him her plans: she would willingly defect from the Soviet Union and take with her the precious LEKTOR only if Bond assisted the operation. She claimed that she had fallen in love with the man from a picture she had seen in a secret file and wanted to live with him. Both M and Bond believe this to be a trap, but the prize is valuable enough to go for it. They react just as the main instigator of the plot, chess champion Kronsteen, had predicted. Bond then flies to Istanbul and contacts Kerim, spending several days there, waiting for contact. After a riot at a Gypsy camp, Bond returns to his hotel room and finds Romanova walking across the room and getting into his bed, wearing only a black velvet choker and black stockings. They make love, but are secretly filmed by Klebb's minions via a one-way mirror. This tape is explicitly planned to be used to embarrass MI6.

In the film, after meeting her again to verify the authenticity of her information, they blow up the Soviet Embassy in Istanbul to cover their escape. With the help of Kerim, they board the Orient Express and depart for Trieste and the Italian frontier. As a part of Kronsteen's strategy, the SPECTRE assassin Donald 'Red' Grant kills Kerim. Bond contacts Grant, who is pretending to be an agent named Nash. After sedating Romanova, Nash's identity is revealed to Bond, who then fights Grant in their train room. Prior to the fight, Grant explains that he is going to kill Bond and then execute the sleeping Romanova with Bond's gun, making it look like a murder-suicide. Bond finally defeats Grant and takes Romanova to Venice. It is there they meet Klebb again who, in an attempt to retrieve the LEKTOR and kill Bond, disguises herself as a maid and tries to eliminate the agent with a dagger-tipped shoe poisoned with blowfish venom. Romanova shoots Klebb, thus saving Bond. She and Bond are last seen on a boat in Venice, with Bond dropping the incriminating negatives into the canal.


See more BOND GIRLS AND OTHER LADIES IN 007 FILMS here