MADS MIKKELSEN - NEW BOND GIRL WILL BE "VERY MUCH AN EQUAL TO BOND"

Just one day after announcing that Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen would portray the villain in Casino Royale, the next James Bond flick, the film's producers said that French actress Eva Green had been cast as the next "Bond girl." Green, who starred opposite Orlando Green in Kingdom of Heaven (and was later linked to him romantically), will play the role of Vesper Lynd, a role played by Swiss actress Ursula Andress in the original 1967 Casino Royale spoof. In a statement, producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, said: "After an extensive search we have found the perfect actress. ... She brings to the complex role of Vesper an exciting combination of enigmatic and seductive beauty." Columbia Pictures Chairman Amy Pascal added that while Bond stories are first about action, "you need to have palpable sexual tension in the movie and in casting Vesper, we really needed to up the ante, because this character is very much an equal to Bond and central to our story."

17/02/2006