Many people agree that the Bond girl was born when Ursula Andress stepped from the ocean in Dr No in 1964, but actually it all began many years earlier when Vesper Lynd flowed from the pen of Ian Fleming.

A former Naval commander, stockbroker, writer and journalist, Fleming imagined his feminine archetype as a woman who ‘is as serious as you could wish and as cold as an icicle. She speaks French like a native and knows her job backwards.’ She is a woman of refinement and sophistication, but Fleming also takes pleasure in painting her as a sexual being whose ‘medium length dress was a grey ‘soie sauvage’ with a square-cut bodice, lasciviously tight across her fine breasts’.

So what are the essential qualities of the Bond girl? First and foremost she is beautiful, but not merely according to a physical stereotype. Bond girls have been variously fair or dark, tall or short, curvaceous or slender. They have come from all over the world including Africa, Japan, Poland, Russia, India, China, Yugoslavia, Malaysia, Ireland, America, Israel and more. The Bond girl is typically independent, resourceful, mysterious and very, very dangerous.

Over the years Bond girls have set hearts aflame the world over. Here are our ten favourites.

Being Bond

Sick of being jealous of 007's good looks, strong physique and pout, Hugo Rifkind is on a mission to beat Bond at his own game

Multimedia

• Pictures: top 10 Bond girls

Related Internet Links

• Be a Bond baddie

• Timeline: 100 years of Ian Fleming and James Bond

• Interactive James Bond and Ian Fleming exhibition

BACKGROUND

• Top 10 Bond gadgets

• Top 10 Bond cars

• Top 10 Bond villains

• Top 10 Bond locations

• Top 10 most fashionable Bond girls

10. Grace Jones as May Day (A View To A Kill, 1985)

The diva to end all divas took a gloriously fatale turn in the mid-Eighties action fest A View To A Kill. Roger Moore’s Bond could only look on in horror as May Day blew herself up on a handcart, sacrificing her own life to save others.

May Day combined Jones’s forbidding, larger than life sex appeal with the humour of the film itself. She is one of a select few henchmen in the franchise to switch allegiance and join Bond. She commented subsequent to the film’s release that she had enjoyed working with Roger Moore, and that the love scene “was great”.

9. Lois Maxwell, Caroline Bliss and Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny

If there is one constant woman in Bond’s life it is M's secretary Miss Moneypenny. Over the years she has been played by different actresses, who each brought their own style to the role. Moneypenny’s affection for James is unwavering in the face of his philandering, murderous, mercenary cool. Plus she can hold her own in a battle of wits. Two gems from their years of sparring:

GoldenEye (1995)
Miss Moneypenny: You know, this sort of behaviour could qualify as sexual harassment.
James Bond: Really. What's the penalty for that?
Miss Moneypenny: Someday, you'll have to make good on your innuendos.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
James Bond (in bed with his Scandinavian language tutor): I always enjoyed learning a new tongue.
Moneypenny: You always were a cunning linguist, James.

8. Halle Berry as Giacinta ‘Jinx’ Johnson (Die Another Day, 2002)