Obituary: Margaret Nolan, actress who gave world iconic Goldfinger image

Margaret Nolan starring with Sean Connery in James Bond film Goldfinger

In my flat there are probably as many images of Margaret Nolan on as many different media as there are of any other actress.

I have her on DVD and VHS. Her picture is in books and she features on a large, framed film poster.

I even have bubblegum cards with her picture on them from the 1960s.

This may all sound a little weird, but she provided one of the most iconic images of that iconic decade – she was the young woman covered in gold paint in the title sequence and the poster of the James Bond film Goldfinger.

Shirley Eaton played the ill-fated character in the film itself, Jill Masterson, but Nolan, who was only 20 at the time, agreed to be the golden girl in the credits on condition that she also got an acting role in the film.

And so she also played Dink, the masseuse who flirts with Bond and gets a playful slap on her bottom as they part.

Nolan went on to appear with the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night and she was in six of the Carry On films – she has a lengthy fight with Barbara Windsor in Carry on Girls after being accused of stealing Windsor’s silver bikini.

“She was the middle of Venn diagram of everything cool in the 60's; having appeared with the Beatles, been beyond iconic in Bond and been part of the Carry On cast too,” director Edgar Wright said in a tribute on Twitter.

Nolan recently worked with Wright, the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. She has a small part in his new film Last Night in Soho, which is due out next year and also features 1960s star and fellow Bond girl Diana Rigg, who died last month.

Nolan was best known for her films, but appeared on stage in Brian Rix farces and the play The Giveaway with Rita Tushingham, Roy Hudd and Dandy Nichols at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh and at the Garrick Theatre in the London West End.

She also had a much more serious side and was part of an avant-garde, socialist theatre group, which she felt had a negative effect on her career. Last Night in Soho is only her second film since she retired from acting in the 1980s.

Margaret Ann Nolan was born in London in 1943. Her father was serving in the Army and her mother took her to neutral Ireland for the duration of the Second World War. They had family there.

She was training to be a teacher when she met her husband Tom Kempinski, who was an actor with the National Theatre.

Nolan and her twin sister had staged their own little plays when they were children and Kempinski encouraged her to consider acting as a career.

Initially, Nolan found it easier to get work as a model, using the name Vicky Kennedy.

During this time she made an early film appearance in It’s a Bare, Bare World, a short naturist production that was really just an excuse to show naked bodies on screen.

On the strength of her looks and her photos she landed a small role in an episode of classic television series The Saint in 1963 – starring future James Bond Roger Moore – and the following year got the chance to play the starring role in the Goldfinger credits sequence. It was the third of the James Bond films and broke box-office records around the world.

The sequence, for which Nolan was sprayed gold and wore a gold bikini, lasts under three minutes on film, but it took several days to shoot.

“An offer of a two-year contract to publicise the film followed,” she said on her official website, “but I turned this down on the grounds that I would find it difficult to 'live down' such publicity as I wanted to be taken seriously as an actress.

"As it transpired, I couldn't 'live it down' anyway and to this day get regular fan-mail from Bond fans.”

In the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night she appears in the casino scene, wearing pearls, a fur stole and a low-cut evening gown.

Wilfrid Brambell, at the height of his fame on the back of Steptoe and Son, played Paul McCartney’s grandfather. Passing himself off as a high-roller at the tables, he ogles Nolan’s bosom and remarks “I bet you’re a great swimmer”.

Carry on Cowboy was the first of six Carry On films in which she played a string of busty beauties between 1965 and 1974.

Although the films were a staple of British cinemas and featured a regular team of actors for years, the producers were notoriously stingy.

Nolan tried to enlist the help of Equity, the actors’ union, when the films appeared on television and the producers refused to share revenue with the cast. “They were such bastards,” she said.

She had a recurring role in the soap opera The Newcomers in the 1960s and other television and film credits include The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery, Adam Adamant Lives!, Witchfinder General, Budgie – as Adam Faith’s stripper girlfriend – and Spike Milligan’s shows The World of Beachcomber and Q6.

He allowed her to undermine her established screen image, in roles such as a charwoman. She considered him “nutty as a fruitcake”.

After retiring from acting in the 1980s, Nolan bought a farmhouse in Spain and created art, some of which manipulated her early publicity shots to question the commodification of the female form. Her work has been exhibited in London galleries.

She and Kempinski divorced in the early 1970s. He later enjoyed success as the writer of the play Duet for One.

Margaret Nolan is survived by their two sons.

BRIAN PENDREIGH