Maud Adams

Maud Adams arrived in New York in 1963 at just eighteen years old with a suitcase full of ambitions that had little to do with film. Her height and Nordic features landed her at Eileen Ford's agency right away. But modeling was only the first rung of a ladder that would lead her to London.

Film called her in 1970 with a small role in The Boys in the Band. It was a natural transition for a woman who was already gracing the covers of Europe's and America's leading fashion magazines.

It was a quiet start.

In 1974, director Guy Hamilton was looking for a face for The Man with the Golden Gun. Adams landed the role of Andrea Anders and joined the set alongside Roger Moore and Christopher Lee. On that shoot, she discovered that her physical presence worked better than her dialogue in the script.

That 1974 film grossed 97 million dollars worldwide, despite the mixed reviews the franchise received during that stage.

The Woman Who Came Back Twice

In the James Bond universe, the norm was for actresses to disappear after the final credits. Adams broke that unwritten rule when Albert R. Broccoli called her back to star in Octopussy in 1983. Playing the leader of a cult of female smugglers gave her a dramatic weight that the previous Bond co-stars of 007 rarely had.

Filming in India was exhausting due to the heat and the physical demands of the action scenes. But she was already used to the grueling pace of the New York advertising industry, and she endured fourteen-hour days without complaint.

And the gamble paid off.

In 1985, she returned to the franchise during the filming of A View to a Kill in San Francisco. It was a chance cameo while she was visiting the set, and she went so unnoticed that many viewers still can't spot her among the crowd in a street scene near a fishmonger.

Refuge in Television and Business

Outside the world of espionage, she took part in Rollerball in 1975 alongside James Caan. That sports dystopia became a cult classic over the decades. Adams played Ella, the lost romantic interest of the protagonist in a world dominated by huge global corporations.

During the 1980s, she turned to American television to keep her income steady. She starred in the series Emerald Point N.A.S. in 1983, playing Maggie Farrell across twenty-two episodes before the project was canceled.

There were no more major film contracts after that.

So she decided to diversify her income outside the Hollywood spotlight. In 1994, she launched her own cosmetics line, Maud Adams Beauty, drawing on her previous experience in the beauty industry as a Revlon spokesmodel. The company let her manage her public image with a freedom that film studios denied her.

In 1999, she returned to her native Sweden to host the TV show Kast med kniv. It was a brief chapter before she moved back to Los Angeles for good and stepped away from the media spotlight.

Her last credited appearance in a fiction production was in 2008 in the Swedish series The Last Detective. Maud Adams has lived in Beverly Hills since then with her husband, judge Charles Rubin, whom she married on May 23, 1999.