Ex-Bond girl Halle Berry doesn't think making 007 a woman is 'the right thing to do'
While serving on the jury for the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, the 58-year-old actress addressed the ongoing discussion about replacing the fictional spy with a woman in a future franchise.
"I don't know if 007 really should be a woman," Berry responded. "In 2025, it's nice to say, 'Oh, she should be a woman.' But, I don't really know if I think that's the right thing to do."
Berry previously played the character Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson in the 2002 film "Die Another Day" alongside Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.
Former 'Bond' Girl Eva Green Thinks The New 007 'Should Remain A Man' Amid Calls For A Female Recasting
The idea of a female James Bond has been a hot-button issue in Hollywood for nearly a decade. In 2017, Berry similarly dismissed Bond being played by a woman in favor of more original characters.
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"I want [women] to be tough, but I don't know if Bond should be a woman," Berry said. "I mean, that series is steeped in history, you know, Ian Fleming's stories. I don't think you can change Bond to a woman."
"We can create a new Bond character that's a woman, and give her a new name, based on that theory, but I don't know if Bond should be a woman," she added.
Berry wasn't the only former Bond girl who questioned the idea of gender-swapping James Bond over the years. In 2019, "The Spy Who Loved Me" actress Valerie Leon blasted the idea, arguing that the character was always successful as a man.
"He's a fantasy. So many men have wanted to be Bond and women have wanted to be with Bond. How can people fantasize about a woman as Bond? Men aren't going to go for a woman as a killer or an assassin," Leon said.
In 2024, British actress Gemma Arterton, who starred in 2008's "Quantum of Solace," said Hollywood should respect the tradition of the character and called out the absurdity of the idea.
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"Isn't a female James Bond like Mary Poppins being played by a man?" she remarked. "They talk about it, but I think people would find it too outrageous."
The most recent iteration of James Bond was played by British actor Daniel Craig in the 2021 film "No Time to Die." Though Amazon MGM Studios recently made a deal to control the creative rights to the 007 character, there have been no announcements regarding the future of the franchise.Original article source: Ex-Bond girl Halle Berry doesn't think making 007 a woman is 'the right thing to do'
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Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: So long, Lolla kids. Hope you had fun.
After a slow start, we've come to regard Lollapalooza with affection. The kids who flock to Chicago (more than 100,000 per day this year, reportedly) are a fun crew, their destination instantly recognizable from their sparkly, skimpy attire wherever we encountered them in the city this weekend (usually peering into their phones, trying to find their Ubers). And, of course, they spend a lot of money around town, especially in and around Chicago's Loop, which needs their support. We'd expect the economic impact of the festival this year to be somewhere around $500 million, if not more. Over the years, Lollapalooza has turned into a good Chicago citizen and, with apologies to Coachella, which has a broader cultural mandate, has become North America's equivalent of Glastonbury, the massive outdoor British festival, which makes news in the entertainment business every year, often by slating such things as final farewells from the likes of Elton John and Rod Stewart, the pairings of iconic artists and young artists showing respect for previous generations. We saw some of that last phenomenon this year at Lolla, when young, female headliners such as Gracie Abrams brought out Robyn, Olivia Rodrigo introduced Weezer and Sabrina Carpenter surprised attendees with Earth, Wind & Fire, a retro band that also happens to be playing Ravinia on Thursday night. We hope that, for all our mutual benefits, Lolla keeps its focus on those deft kinds of surprises. The Chicago Police Department tells us that this year's festival went off without any significant trouble, beyond what you might reasonably expect when that many humans gather in one place. There were only 12 total arrests over the four nights, which is minimal; zero tickets issued (not a typo) and 42 ambulance reports, which is way down from previous years (in 2021, for example, there were 102 transports). The cooler weather likely helped, but this is all good news. It could well be that the disruptions caused to downtown residents by the now-departed NASCAR, which actually involved city streets and resulted in lengthy closures, has made us better appreciate Lollapalooza, which mostly confines itself to established festival grounds. We also always appreciate the effort to bring in local food operations, such as Fatso's Last Stand and the family-owned Bacci Pizzeria. And we heard from out-of-towners who were impressed with this year's drone show — especially how well it framed the real Willis Tower, if you had the right angle. Better yet, the aftershows at venues all over town were hopping this past weekend, from the Salt Shed to Radius and from Schubas Tavern to Lincoln Hall. Past concerns about the big event locking up acts with exclusive deals in protected territory haven't entirely gone away, but with this many people at so successful a festival, it's now clear that the smaller venues in Chicago generally have decided it's better to join the four-night party than stand against it. The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events could do more to use the Lolla base for the benefit of the whole city and get attendees to stay for a week or more. Still, much as we often detail Chicago's problems in this space, we also know that its gorgeous skyline can seduce a young visitor like nowhere else in the Midwest. Huge benefits accrue, not just in terms of tourism but when it comes to attracting new residents, when young pop stars with tens of millions of followers post love letters to our town, as when Carpenter posted 'thank you, Chicago. Wow.' Carpenter also made specific reference to Chicago in her set, mimicking a Chicago news station. Rodrigo found her way to Wrigley Field this weekend and we heard tell of a certain young Chicago Cubs star present at Lollapalooza, too. Simply put, this was a weekend for the spotlight to find a way through the haze and shine on the beauty, action and artistry of a Chicago summer. Glastonbury is taking the year off in 2026 to allow the natural land to recover. Thanks to our urban setting and the hard work of those who tend to its grounds, Lollapalooza does not have that problem. It'll be back — and we're happy about that.
Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Queen Camilla is ready for more ‘Slow Horses.' And Gary Oldman is happy to oblige
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Either way, he's full of the joys of his very hot summer. 'Big sky, big mountain and 102 here at the moment,' he beams. He finds L.A. too chilly now. 'I'm thrilled with it,' he grins of his knighthood, 'and no, I wasn't angling for it. I mean, I've done some stuff for charity over the years, and I would like to think I'm a good export, an ambassador of Britain. I have a green card, but I don't have American citizenship. I'm still a British subject.' He's thrilled too about his Emmy nomination, but less enamored of relentless questions about 'how you pull the rabbit out of the hat.' 'Can't it just be a bloody mystery? Why do we have to sort of take it all apart?' he asks. 'I think half of the time I make it up. I don't know, I just do. It's like you have a facility for something. It's like asking a tennis player, 'How do you return the ball?' 'I've just been able to do it since I was 12.' I don't look up videos of Peter O'Toole talking about acting.' Oldman notes he moved to Hollywood 'completely by accident' because he 'wanted to go to the place where they were making films so I could practice.' Film, he did, ad infinitum, particularly enjoying the spy genre in 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,' which garnered him his first Oscar nomination as lead actor in 2012, long before Jackson Lamb appeared on his radar. It appears 'Slow Horses' might satisfy part of his creative itch for some years to come. Season 6 is already in the can, and Season 7 is due to start filming this fall. 'It is something I could just do. Can I see an end? I don't know,' he says. 'I love the people and the show and the character. But it's nothing to do with that. Apple write the checks and have been generous in their check-writing. I mean, how do you feel? Do you think people would eventually just get fed up with it?' I demur, along with members of the British royal family apparently. 'The Queen [Camilla] said to me, 'Are there any more?' 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Oldman's most recent 'charity work' was his pro bono four-week run this spring of Samuel Beckett's one-man play 'Krapp's Last Tape' at York Theatre Royal, scene of his professional stage debut in 1979 and his first U.K. stage appearance in 37 years. 'I kind of got kidnapped by film and with all the other life experiences — kids, divorce, marriage, divorce, sobriety,' he says. 'You turn around and think, 'When did I last do a play?' And I thought, 'I'd really like to do it, let me put my toe back in the water.'' He wondered, 'Well, will anyone come? Is anyone interested? I was worried whether we'd fill 700 or 800 seats, and then the day they announced the tickets, their computer crashed.' There's that huge smile again, one suggesting he still can't quite believe it. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't waste time worrying too much about his place in the Hollywood pantheon. 'Maybe there are people somewhere in an executive office sitting around saying, 'What about Gary Oldman for this role?' and 'No, he's unavailable because he's doing the show.' But I like what 'Slow Horses' has afforded me over the last few years. I get some downtime, I got to do theater, I've got my photography and other things, rather than thinking about this or that film and 'they want you but they don't know if they can go this year.' 'I feel so privileged, so bloody lucky that at 67 years old, I'm in a show of this caliber, that people have really actually embraced. I'm so very, very blessed, and it's also nice to know that you're going to be working. Yeah, it's nice to be in regular employment.'
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
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Is Jason Bond Boston's best-known roving chef?
Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up Bond still hopes to open his own urban restaurant. But, for now, he's content to cook in someone else's kitchen. Advertisement Is it psychologically weird to cook for someone else? Do you feel like: 'Wait! I'm Jason Bond!'? Or do you adopt the culture of wherever you're working? I think it's a blend. I think they hire you for what you bring, and you should do your best to bring that. But at the same time, you know, not everything that I do is appropriate for the environment. The brisket I smoked this morning was inappropriate for Clover a couple years ago. Advertisement One of the things about owning your own restaurants is that you can take suggestions or not. It's your choice. If something crashes and burns, at least it's your own decision. 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During the pandemic, bakery sales certainly helped the business survive, because we were able to expand on that to the point that I actually had to buy new equipment just to be able to produce the volume that we were producing. But it further reinforced the idea that we were just maxing out the physical space. Advertisement I closed to spend time looking for a space, work for some other people, and see what I could learn. It's just been a lot more difficult to get a space where all the parameters work out than I thought it would be, because rents are higher than in 2010. Build-out costs are so much more expensive. It will [happen] eventually. A plate of Scituate Scallops from Bondir in 2011. Essdras M Suarez/Globe Staff How has Cambridge changed since you first opened your restaurant versus now? It seems like there's hardly any independent people like me — just a person running their place. It seems really hard to find outside of a bull market situation. Bondir, for example, had 28 seats. We could probably push it to 35 if we really stretched our seating allowance and hoped the inspectors didn't come by. But it was a small restaurant. You could run it very efficiently. If it was slow and there's a pandemic, you could easily shrink it down, and you didn't have to fire anybody. If it's busy, it's only 35 seats. Ultimately, Bondir was two people. We started off with seven when we first opened, and things were just cranking. We discovered that there was a sweet spot where we could really do half the sales and make the same profit. Because we could do it with fewer people, we could do it more efficiently. I like the small restaurant idea. To me, it works and makes sense business-wise. What about the taste of customers? What do people want these days? Advertisement Another reason I wanted to get back out in the world and work for some people was just simply to see what people were ordering and what people were interested in. That was my problem with opening in Concord. I didn't know those people. I knew the Bondir people. When I was in the developmental phase of my career at fine-dining restaurants, people were interested in a bigger variety of things, maybe; I haven't gotten to travel in a few years. There seems to be less interest in actually seeking out something or being excited by something that's unfamiliar: even old-school dishes, like veal or lamb sweetbreads. Are you going to put sweetbreads on your menu? When it's mine? Yes, 100 percent. I'd love to have one at Lou's eventually. I see Lou's like when I started at Beacon Hill Bistro: Go in and start building from zero and start forming a relationship. See who the people are that come in. See what they like. Let them get to know me. See what I'm like, and you sort of start that conversation, and you learn who's interested in different things. Slowly, you can grow the menu and expand and slowly see what excites them or what pisses them off. I think it's more about building a relationship at this point. Advertisement Tell me about Lou's. What are you serving? The new owners really made a beautiful space. It's a cool, old-school, clubby-type setting, that old dinner-and-a-show-type thing where you might go hear Sinatra singing and you're having a martini and a steak or whatever. Or not a steak. Anyway, I wrote down pages of ideas around food from that era and that style of dining. Then, I took out the edit pen and figured out how to lighten it up. Harvard Square has students, tourists, people who actually live here. Those are three very different groups, and we want to be a place that welcomes everyone in and has something for them — a reason for them to come in and a reason for them to come back, hopefully, more importantly. I wanted the menu to reflect all the different people and all the different ways they might use the space as a place in their community. For people visiting, I wanted to be sure that if they were just dropped here and saw the menu, it would give them an experience of actually being in Cambridge in August. The ingredients are of the season. The ingredients are from here. I don't want it to be the same kind of menu you'd have at the airport. I wanted it to be something that actually has context for where we are and when we are. It's fresh and seasonal and, I think, classic American cooking. How has Harvard Square changed over the years? It's kind of like Central Square, where I live. The character has changed a lot over the last 20-some years, but also, you're less likely to get stabbed in an alley and that kind of thing. It's good and bad. There's a Citizens Bank Café or something like that. You've got that kind of thing, versus your Joanne Chang bakery. I've been hearing the same thing about Harvard Square for 20 years, where it's like, 'Oh, it's losing its character.' I wouldn't say that the argument is different now. There are still a few small, weird places, but there are fewer of them, I think. Everything changes. That's life in general. You adapt or move to Kansas or something. Where do you eat when you're not working? I've been to Saigon Babylon a couple times recently. It's really fun. I think those guys are amazing. I go to the Plough and Stars a lot. I just love it, and I've been going there as long as I've lived here. Something draws me to it. What's your go-to order? The gumbo and a Guinness. If we're going out for a nice dinner, we love going to Spoke or Pammy's. Those are good examples of independent operators who are doing creative things, and I'm super happy to see that they're very busy. But those are the type of places it's harder to find — or maybe there are the same number of creative restaurants as there always has been, but there are just a lot more restaurants in general. That's probably actually what's happening. There are the same number of good restaurants; it's just that there are a lot more restaurants than there used to be. What restaurants that no longer exist do you really miss? Oh, man. No. 9 Park back in the old days was incredible. Clio was a lot of fun, just because [Ken Oringer] was doing his very best to push and be creative in a fine-dining format. Hamersley's was such an inspiration, just because you could see [Gordon Hamersley] there every night of the week, working, making sure things were like they should be. It was such a classic Boston restaurant. I went to Biba so many times when I first moved to Boston. I was a young cook and it blew me away, just the ideas, the feeling of the room, and the different foods [Lydia Shire] would do. Some were elegant, some were funny — just the names, the words she used, the ingredients, and even the service aspect. The maître d' had a huge impact on me. I remember going in, I was a kid, in a suit that I bought Buck a Pound or something. I walk up the stairs in the dining room, and the maître d''s like, 'So glad you're here!' The idea of saying that to someone in a way that sounds like you actually mean it made a big impact on what I thought you could do with a restaurant: It's simply to make somebody feel really good. The bar space at Eastern Standard on Oct. 22, 2023. Nathan Klima for The Boston Globe What is your take on the new Eastern Standard? Can it recapture the old magic? It's hard to open a restaurant. It's really hard to open a classic restaurant. Garrett [Harker] is kind of like Gordon Hamersley, where Garrett's there every night, working his ass off. I don't even understand it sometimes, watching him running plates. You own it! You have people to do it. Like I said with Harvard Square, things change, and you've got to change and adapt, and that's how you continue to grow. Everybody's going to miss the room and the original Eastern Standard that blew everybody away and was such a thing. The new Eastern Standard's got incredible chefs, an incredible bar program. They're really killing it, and they built it out in such a way. It's a beautiful kitchen. It's a beautiful production space. The original Eastern Standard wasn't necessarily built to actually be busy. I think they're fighting nostalgia, because people went to the old Eastern Standard for so many years, and it's like, oh, man, this place is amazing. The new one only has 14-foot ceilings instead of 30. Sorry, but what are you going to do? You've got to do your best. They take amazing care of people. They're a great restaurant, and even if they did have to change spaces, it's still a great restaurant. What do you do when you're not working? I like to cycle. I like to read. I like to work on my business plan. My girlfriend just moved in, so we've been spending a lot of time just sort of moving two adults' worth of furniture around the apartment. What would you eat for your last meal? Probably a whole rhubarb pie. Interview was edited and condensed. Kara Baskin can be reached at
