Claudine Auger
Biography
Claudine Auger (born Claudine Oger; 26 April 1941 – 18 December 2019) was a French actress best known for her role as a Bond girl, Dominique "Domino" Derval, in the James Bond film Thunderball (1965). She earned the title of Miss France Monde 1958 (the French representative to the Miss World beauty pageant) and finished as the first runner-up in the 1958 Miss World contest.
Jean Cocteau cast Auger in an uncredited role as a tall ballerina in Testament of Orpheus (1960). When she was 18, she married the 43-year-old writer-director Pierre Gaspard-Huit, and he cast her in several films, including Le Masque de fer (1962) and Kali Yug: Goddess of Vengeance (1963). In 1966 she co-starred in the World War II drama Triple Cross with Yul Brynner and Christopher Plummer.
The most immediate byproduct of Claudine's stardom was a semi-nude Playboy spread.
Thunderball launched Auger into a successful European movie career but did little for her otherwise in the United States. However, she starred in a Danny Thomas special called The Road to Lebanon with Bing Crosby, shown on NBC on 20 April 1966.
Auger co-starred with another Bond girl, Ursula Andress, in the Italian comedy Anyone Can Play (1968). She starred with two future Bond girls, Barbara Bouchet and Barbara Bach, in Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971), a giallo mystery.
She had some roles in European films such as Triple Cross (1966, reuniting her with her James Bond director Terence Young), and The Killing Game (1967). She filmed scenes for The Eiger Sanction (1975), only to have her entire performance cut from the movie.
Auger appeared in the British television series The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, in "The Three Gables" (1994), as Isadora Klein, in one of the last episodes of the series.
