Anita Ekberg was reportedly devastated upon learning that James Bond star Sean Connery had got married.
The Swedish film star, who shot to fame after appearing in Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita, died in 2015, aged 83.
Her reaction to Connery’s nuptials with Australian actor Diane Cilento is one of a number of revelations in a new posthumous memoir, Hollywood on the Tiber, by American couple Hank Kaufman and Gene Lerner.
Kaufman and Lerner, who died in 2012 and 2004, respectively, arrived in Rome from New York in 1953 and befriended Hollywood A-listers including Ekberg, Ava Gardner and Shelley Winters.
The Guardian reports that along with the glitz and glamour of the scene, the book also shines a light on the film industry’s sleazy side, evidenced in Ekberg’s response to hearing a director wanted to meet her: “What is he, another of those kind who just wants to make passes at me or ogle my body?”
The famously outspoken star was apparently shocked to learn that Connery had married Cilento, telling Lerner: “He told me we would get married… Men take advantage. When it comes to real love, I’m always duped.”
Ekberg was pictured with the Scottish actor at an afterparty for a screening of Dr No, the first film in the James Bond franchise, in 1963.
She also had a small cameo in the Bond sequel From Russia With Love, when Russian agent Krilencu attempts to escape through a window – situated in Ekberg’s mouth on a wall-sized poster of her 1963 movie Call Me Bwana (also by producer Albert Broccoli).
“She should have kept her mouth shut,” Bond memorably quips.
Ekberg was considered for the role of the first Bond Girl, Honey Ryder, in Dr No, but the part ultimately went to the then-unknown Swiss actor, Ursula Andress. Ekberg and Andress starred together with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in another 1963 film, 4 for Texas, which received mixed reviews.
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Connery and Cilento were married between 1962 to 1973. In her own memoir, Cilento accused her ex-husband of abusing her; Connery himself caused uproar during a notorious 1987 interview with Playboy in which he said he didn’t think there was “anything wrong with hitting a woman”.
The James Bond star, who died aged 90 in 2020, said: “I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman, although I don’t recommend doing it in the same way that you’d hit a man.”
The James Bond star said that an “openhanded slap” is “justified” if “all other alternatives fail and there has been plenty of warning”.
“If a woman is a b***, or hysterical, or bloody-minded continually, then I’d do it,” he added.
Hollywood on the Tiber is published on 16 January.
