“It Broke My Heart": Former Bond Girl Recalls Being Mocked For The World Is Not Enough

Former Bond girl Denise Richards recalls being made fun of for her role as Dr. Christmas Jones opposite Pierce Brosnan in The World Is Not Enough.

The World Is Not Enough star Denise Richards, who plays love interest Dr. Christmas Jones, reveals that her role in the James Bond film resulted in some hurtful mocking. Released in 1999, The World Is Not Enough serves as Pierce Brosnan's penultimate 007 movie, chronicling Bond's attempts to stop a deadly nuclear attack. On his globe-trotting adventure, he encounters Richards' Jones, an American nuclear physicist who eventually comes to aid Bond in his quest against terrorist Renard (Robert Carlyle).

In a recent interview with Variety, Richards recalls being mocked for her role as Jones in The World Is Not Enough. A particular motive for the ridicule, the actor reveals, was the highly sexualized nature of her nuclear physicist character. Check out Richards' full comment below:

"It broke my heart that people were making fun of me. ‘Oh, really? You’re wearing shorts and you’re a nuclear scientist?’" I’m playing a Bond girl. If I wore a lab coat and pants and a suit, then [fans] would have been upset, like, ‘Okay, why isn't she looking like a sexy Bond girl?’"

The Bond movie franchise, which first got its start back in the early 1960s remains beloved to this day, but not all aspects of the films have aged well. By today's standards, the franchise's treatment of female characters certainly leaves something to be desired. From Sean Connery's first outing as Bond in Dr. No, female characters were mostly relegated to the role of being one-note, disposable love interests, mysterious women that Bond would pursue, sleep with, and then discard.

In addition to serving mostly as highly sexualized love interests, many of the franchise's "Bond Girls" also don't end up surviving the events of their respective films. Their deaths are often used as a source of motivation for Bond to defeat a big bad or, more troublingly, he sometimes doesn't seem to care very much at all. Thankfully, however, the Daniel Craig Bond era makes some effort to evolve the idea of what a Bond girl is.

Related: How No Time To Die Ended The "Bong Girl" Trope For Good

Although Eva Green's Vesper Lynd dies in Casino Royale, the character is one of the best examples of a Bond girl being developed as a three-dimensional character. She's also crucial to both the 2006 film and Bond's arc in its 2008 sequel. Subsequent Craig-era Bond movies would further improve the franchise's portrayal of women, introducing characters like Naomie Harris' Moneypenny, Léa Seydoux's Madeleine Swann, and Ana de Armas' No Time To Die fan-favorite, Paloma. While The World Is Not Enough does fall into some tired Bond girl tropes, Jones does at least survive and serve as more of a sidekick.

Source: Variety