Died: March 6, 2021.
NIKKI van der Zyl, who has died aged 85, played a vital but unacknowledged part in one of the best-remembered scenes in 20th-century film history. In the first James Bond film, Dr No (1962), it was her voice that issued forth from the bikini-clad form of Ursula Andress, whose own tones were judged “not exotic enough”, as she emerged onto a Jamaican beach, under the intrigued gaze of Sean Connery in his debut as 007.
A specialist in dubbing – or “revoicing”, to use her preferred term – van der Zyl stood in vocally for several leading ladies in subsequent Bond films. Her fees were modest – £25 per session for Dr No, rising to £30 for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).