Born: August 27, 1947
Age: 77
Birthplace: Queens, New York, U.S.
Barbara Bach (born Barbara Goldbach; August 27, 1947) is an American actress and model known for playing the Bond girl Anya Amasova in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). She subsequently starred in Force 10 from Navarone (1978). She is married to former Beatle Ringo Starr.
Bach was born in Rosedale, Queens, and grew up in Jackson Heights, the daughter of Marjorie and Howard I. Goldbach (1922-2001), a policeman. Her mother is Irish Catholic, while her father was Jewish (from a family from Germany, Austria, and Romania). She attended a Catholic high school, Dominican Commercial, in Jamaica, Queens. Bach left school at age 16 to become a model.
Her acting career started in Italy, as she played Nausicaa in L'Odissea, an eight hours long TV adaptation of Homer's famous epic poem The Odyssey. Directed by Franco Rossi and produced by Dino de Laurentiis, the series was very successful in Europe and Canada.
In 1972, Bach co-starred with two other Bond girls, Claudine Auger and Barbara Bouchet in the mystery La Tarantola dal ventre nero (a giallo film) and had small roles in other Italian films.
In 1977, her role as the Russian spy Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me gained her recognition as an international sex symbol. Bach remarked after the film that Bond is "a chauvinist pig who uses girls to shield him against bullets." The following year she appeared in the movie Force 10 from Navarone. She lost a role to actress Shelley Hack when she auditioned for the television series Charlie's Angels. Bach has 28 films to her credit. She has not worked as an actress since the mid-1980s. She featured in her own pictorial in Playboy in June 1977, and she was the cover girl and had her own pictorial in January 1981. She also had a cameo in a September 1987 special issue on the Bond girls.
Bach met Italian businessman Augusto Gregorini on a flight to Rome in 1966. They were married in 1968 and moved to Italy where they had a daughter, singer-songwriter Francesca Gregorini (born August 7, 1968) and a son Gianni (born in 1972). In 1975, Bach separated from Gregorini and moved back to the United States with her two children.
Bach met Ringo Starr on the set of the film Caveman in February 1980, and they were married on April 27, 1981, a few weeks after the film's release. In recent years, Bach has accompanied Starr on his tours and has appeared in some of his music videos, playing on some of his songs. They live in the English village of Cranleigh.
Joe Walsh, guitarist with the bands the James Gang and the Eagles, married Barbara Bach's sister, Marjorie Bach, in Los Angeles on December 13, 2008.
In October 1988, Bach and Starr attended a detox clinic in Tucson, Arizona, each receiving a six-week treatment for alcoholism.
Bach holds a Master's degree (UCLA, 1993) in Psychology. She started the Self Help Addiction Recovery Program (S.H.A.R.P.) with the help of George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd, the former wife of both Harrison and Clapton. Bach and Starr created The Lotus Foundation, a charity with many sub-charities.
Barbara Bach, along with her husband Ringo, is vegetarian.
Year | Title | Role |
---|---|---|
1968 | L'Odissea (a.k.a. The Adventures of Ulysses) | Nausicaa |
1971 | Mio padre Monsignore | Chiara |
La Tarantola dal ventre nero (a.k.a. Black Belly of the Tarantula) | Jenny | |
La Corta notte delle bambole di vetro (a.k.a. Paralyzed / Short Night of Glass Dolls) | Mira Svoboda | |
Un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide (a.k.a. A Few Hours of Sunlight / A Little Sun in Cold Water) | Héloïse/Elvire | |
1972 | I Predatori si muovono all'alba | Helen |
1973 | Paolo il caldo (a.k.a. The Sensual Man / The Sensuous Sicilian) | Anna |
Il maschio ruspante | Rema | |
L' Ultima chance (a.k.a. Stateline Motel / Last Chance / Motel of Fear) | Emily | |
1974 | Il Cittadino si ribella (a.k.a. Street Law / The Citizen Rebels) | Barbara |
1975 | Il Lupo dei mari (a.k.a. Legend of the Sea Wolf / Larsen, Wolf of the Seven Seas) | Maud Brewster |
1977 | Ecco noi per esempio | Ludovica |
The Spy Who Loved Me | Anya Amasova | |
1978 | Force 10 from Navarone | Maritza Petrovich |
1979 | L' Isola degli uomini pesce (a.k.a. Island of the Fishmen / Screamers) | Amanda Marvin |
L' Umanoide (a.k.a. The Humanoid) | Lady Agatha | |
Jaguar Lives | Anna Thompson | |
Il Fiume del grande caimano (a.k.a. Alligators / The Big Alligator River / The Great Alligator) | Alice Brandt | |
1980 | Up the Academy | Bliss |
1981 | Caveman | Lana |
The Unseen | Jennifer Fast | |
1982 | The Cooler | |
1983 | Princess Daisy | Vanessa Valerian |
1984 | Give My Regards to Broad Street | Journalist |
1986 | To the North of Katmandu |