THE SEXY VOICE BEHIND THE BOND GIRLS...

PALMA
WHEN Honey Rider (Ursula Andress) comes striding out of the sea in Dr. No most people will be too busy focused on the screen godess's every movement as opposed to listening her sexy voice which in fact belongs to British actress Nikki van der Zyl.

Nikki was the “voice behind the Bond bodies” is nine Bond film and “voiced” Andress in a number other films including She and The Blue Max.
In fact, her movie and television revoicing, technically known as post-sychronisation, credits are endless but also include Eunice Gayson in From Russia With Love, Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger, Jane Seymour in Live and Let Die , Claudine Auger in Thunderball and Kissy, who Bond marries in You Only Live Twice.

Her voice also replaced that of Anita Eckberg in Call Me Bwana with Bob Hope.
Nikki explained yesterday that the main problem with Andress was, while she looked superb, her voice was not sexy enough and her foreign accent was too heavy. “ What they wanted was what was called a ‘mid-Atlantic accent' which has a cosmopolitan European sound with a touch of French and German and one which could be clearly understood in the States, the biggest movie market,” she said.

In fact, Nikki's ability to revoice the Bond girls so successfully enabled the producers to use little-knwon foreign actresses with limited acting ability.

While they looked good on screen, Nikki provided the vitally important seductive voices.
She became close friends with Sean Connery, he taught her how to play golf, and Roger Moore as well as the Broccolis, but having trained at the Central School for Speech and Drama, she really wanted to be an actress, in front of the camera. “I was good, enjoyed much stage work but I was type-cast as the Bond girl voice and, despite coming close on a number of occasions, never quite got a role in front of the camera,” she said.

She also admits that she was rather hard done by the Bond producer who paid very little “and it wasn't just me, everyone was treated the same, poorly, I was never really paid my due.” But, believe it or not, her voice has fans all over the world and Bond fans who were not even born when the likes of Dr. No was first released, still contact her for autographs.

However, eventually, Nikki decided to stop to being the voice behind the movie cameras to becoming the voice in the law courts when she studied to become a barrister in the early 70*s and towards the end of her law studies, came across David Mellor whom she went to on work for as private secretary in the House of Commons.

The media and politics were to become very important in her career.
After leaving Mellor's office she became a lobby correspondent for TVS (now Meridian television in South England) and spent 12 years covering politics and the Margaret Thatcher years in Westminster.

During her time working for Mellor, she also got to know John Major and, with her vast experience of the media and politics, Nikki was hired by Major to monitor the media coverage of the Conservative Party during the 1993 general election campaign. “We were all pretty surprised when he won,” she revealed.
But, victory for the Conservatives marked the end of Nikki's political career and after winning an art competition, decided to study art at Barnet Art College in London.

Today, in between attending Bond festivals and Bond events, Nikki, who has been visiting Majorca where her parents owned a property for years, paints, writes poetry, writes songs and gives concerts - it certainly was not Andress singing “Underneath the mango tress” as she emerged from the water in Dr. No.

Nikki is still a Bond fan, her favourite is Sean Connery but admits that she likes the new Daniel Craig. “Roger was great too and Pierce was very attractive, but Sean's my favourite,” she said before admitting that, while the Bond format has perhaps become a bit stayed nowadays, it continues to break box-office records and attract new fans all over the world. “It's really quite amazing, I've got fans who weren't even born when I was voicing the Bond girls.”