Martine Beswick

Brunette bombshell and second-string goddess Jamaican actress Martine Beswick(e) was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica to a British father and Portuguese/Jamaican mother . Following her parent's separation in 1954, her mother moved to London with Martine and her younger sister Laurellie. In 1955, Martine left school to work to help support her family. Some brief modeling and pageant entering came to be before seeking a career in films. She allegedly once won a "Miss Autoville" contest and won a car only to sell it in order to move to and study acting in London.

While finding roles on such British TV series as "Secret Agent," "Love Story" and "Court Martial," a minor break occurred for Martine in the James Bond "007" film series. Director Terence Young cast her twice -- as the gypsy girl Zora in From Russia with Love (1963) and then as the doomed spy Paula in Thunderball (1965). After playing in the well-tanned minority ranks for years, Martine finally got noticed after cat-fighting with Raquel Welch in the cult prehistoric saga One Million Years B.C. (1966), which also starred handsome caveman John Richardson. She also starred in her own back-in-time Neanderthal low-budget Prehistoric Women (1967).

Transporting herself to Hollywood in the late 1960's, Martine guested on such shows as "It Takes a Thief," "Mannix," "The Name of the Game" and "Longstreet." She then made an infamous mark as the distaff evil incarnate in the Hammer Studio horror cult hit Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971). Other films during that time usually had her in various stages of sexy undress, including Ultimo tango a Zagarol (1973), The Kiss of Death (1974) and Seizure (1974).

She later focused on TV with such mini-movie entries as Crime Club (1975), Strange New World (1975), Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978), My Husband Is Missing (1978) and The Tenth Month (1979), plus the mini-series Aspen (1977) and episodes of "The Six Million Dollar Man," "Baretta," "Quincy," "The Fall Guy," "Fantasy Island," "Hart to Hart," "Buffalo Bill" and "Sledge Hammer." In the mid-1980's, Martine also found back-to-back daytime work on the soap operas Days of Our Lives (1965) and Santa Barbara (1984).

On film, she would quicken pulses as Xaviera Hollander as The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (1980), but not return until the early 1990's with the horror films Evil Spirits (1991) and Trancers II (1991), the comedy Life on the Edge (1992) and the drama Wide Sargasso Sea (1993). After filming Night of the Scarecrow (1995), Martine retired from films.

Since then, she has mainly participated in film documentaries, providing commentary and relating her experiences on the many films in which she has appeared. She owned a removals business in London and is semiretired except for guest appearances at James Bond conventions. She did, however, more recently return (after 25 years) to star with fellow Hammer actors Caroline Munro and Veronica Carlson in a horror "tribute" to Hammer entitled House of the Gorgon (2019).