Bond girl Monica: Why I'm looking forward to the menopause... and think the new film's so violent it's almost pornographic
Loving life: Monica Bellucci, Spectre's Bond girl, in an advert for Dolce & Gabbana
Monica Bellucci keeps telling me that she’s in her 50s — ‘Actually 51 now’ — and it has that slightly tired, practised feel of someone who has had to remind people all day, every day.
And I can understand why. With the fuss that’s being made over her role in the new Bond film Spectre, you might think she’s 51 years older than Daniel Craig, 47, rather than a quite unremarkable four.
But Bellucci has declared the decision to cast her as a Bond girl as ‘a revolution’. And she’s grateful to director Sam Mendes.
‘It’s really a new way to look at actresses and women in general,’ she says. ‘We’ve never seen this before — an older woman seducing Bond. Maybe something will change for older women now; for older actresses.’
But let’s be clear. Bellucci is not just any 51‑year-old. She’s frequently voted the most beautiful woman in the world.
Her oeuvre includes a PVC‑clad role in The Matrix movies, and Mary Magdalen in Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ.
In her native Italy she is known simply as La Bellucci. In person, she’s a tiny, voluptuous siren with a pronounced pout. But she sits rod-backed, hands in lap as if in church.
She’s like a statue of the Virgin Mary and someone who would have a screaming row with her lover in the street (probably wearing Dolce & Gabbana and no shoes).
Her sex scene with Bond is, inevitably, steamy, after which she is left on the bed dressed in a burlesque corset and suspender belt. (‘This is what all Italian women wear to bed,’ she teases.)
In some respects it’s the sauciest role in the film — far more than that of Bond’s other love interest, Madeleine Swann, played by Lea Seydoux, 30.
‘Am I sexy?’ she asks. ‘I don’t know. I do what I do. If it’s provocative, it’s not something I can control. I am what I am.’
Mendes made her look older for the part of Lucia Sciarra, a grieving Mafia widow who wears 5in Louboutin heels to her husband’s funeral.
‘He said: “Lucia can’t look 40 or 30, she has to really look 50 years old in the face. We don’t have to be scared of that, we have to show that.” ’
Bellucci says lighting and make-up were used to make her appear more drawn. ‘They wanted to etch this sadness, desperation, loneliness into [my] face.’
There are none of these in Bellucci’s off‑screen face. A single mother to two girls, aged 11 and five (her 14-year marriage to the French actor Vincent Cassel ended in 2013), she says she loves her age. ‘I don’t want to be 20, do you?’
Life after children is, she says, ‘just a new reality’ and ‘nothing to be scared of. Accepting the new reality is the only way you can live. I hope I’ll be alive for a long time’.
Bellucci, pictured with her co-star Daniel Craig, is frequently voted the most beautiful woman in the world
Bellucci was an only child who grew up in Umbria. She studied law at the University of Perugia before modelling and then acting.
She says her role models have made her feel positive about ageing.
‘I’ve had old people in my life that I really loved — especially women — so I’m not scared about getting old. It’s what’s inside that makes us beautiful on the outside.’
She even likes the props of age: ‘Glasses are so nice. All those things are so touching.’
She’s unfazed even by the menopause, ‘which I will start soon’.
Most women don’t embrace it, I suggest.
‘But menopause is a natural thing, it is not a sickness,’ she says.
‘OK, the body at the beginning will get a bit mad. But after a few months, or one year, it’s going to be OK. This is a natural process of life. I am not nervous about it at all.’
She’s already decided to take ‘natural remedies’ (bioidentical hormones, derived from plants, which are said to mimic natural hormones more closely) rather than HRT.
The actress says her role models have made her feel positive about ageing
‘Listen, I had two kids — one when I was 40, one when I was 45. I breastfed for one year, which means I was breastfeeding four years ago. I’m going to move from giving birth to menopause without really realising. Anyway the menopause is going to be great: no periods any more.’
Her frankness about the ageing process would make Hollywood actresses squeamish: ‘Everybody does what she needs. And if you want plastic surgery and then you feel better, why not? There is no law.
‘I’ve nothing against using something to help your beauty — but do it in a good way, with intelligence.’
What help does she get? ‘I have a very good hairdresser,’ she smirks. ‘He dyes my hair.’
She’s not ready ‘yet’ to show her greys — ‘Unless it was for work. For work, yes; for life, no. Maybe later. I have some friends who have white hair and they look amazing.’
She claims she hasn’t yet succumbed to the surgeon’s knife, putting her looks down to ‘vitamins and good face cream’. ‘I use Dr Hauschka products, it’s very natural. I also do acupuncture,’ she says, showing me the points on her face. ‘Because it really helps. It is the opposite of Botox. Botox blocks and acupuncture moves.’
Would she ever have Botox?
‘Botox for some people is really good. For others they have different reactions. I . . .’ she makes a noise like ‘pffffff’. ‘I am for freedom.’
She exercises, she says, but only sporadically. ‘For one month I will do Pilates very often and then for the next I do nothing. But I have an elastic [the giant bands used for resistance stretches in Pilates] that I bring with me to hotels so that I can do some elastic sometimes on my own.’
After her second child, she says: ‘I got my figure back through work. I have a lot of adrenaline. I have a naturally fast system. But I love to eat and I am not skinny.’
To play Lucia in Spectre, she stopped eating pasta before filming, ‘because Lucia is very . . .’ she sucks her cheeks in. ‘You have to feel her suffering. For a role I will be disciplined.’
In life, Bellucci insists: ‘I’m not regular in anything. For example I don’t smoke, but I can have the odd cigarette. I don’t drink, but I can drink one glass of wine. But this is not an effort for me.’
Bellucci, pictured with her co-stars, has an 'Italian' approach to life: ‘Eat well, sleep well and have lots of sex'
Bellucci paraphrases Oscar Wilde on beauty being genius, but becoming dull if there is nothing else to sustain the curiosity. Another maxim she lives by is: ‘Eat well, sleep well and have lots of sex.’
This is, she says, a very ‘Italian’ approach to life: ‘Food is incredible in Italy. Vegetables, pasta, Parmesan — they all taste good.’
Women in Italy also love style ‘and they love fashion. Italian men, too,’ she adds with a laugh, ‘a bit too much. But there’s this sense of beauty and a good life.’
The buttoned-up British attitude towards sex she finds amusing.
I’ve nothing against using something to help your beauty — but do it in a good way, with intelligence
Monica Bellucci
‘And the attitude to pain,’ she adds. She tells me an anecdote about her friend who had terrible toothache and was told off by an English woman for making a fuss.
‘British people don’t express when they are in pain,’ she says. ‘They don’t think it’s elegant.’
In France and Italy everyone is very open, she says. ‘In France it’s not just topless sunbathing, people are naked. In Rome, too, on motorbikes — boobs, legs everywhere.’
Bellucci lives with her daughters in Paris. I ask what life lessons she will pass on, and she says: ‘It’s them that teach me a lot!’ She describes their fun and intimate breakfasts, with everyone talking, ‘telling me about new music and technical things about computers’.
So, will she allow them to see the Bond film? There’s a sharp intake of breath: ‘No! It’s so violent.’
Spectre is a 12A (like Harry Potter), but in a particularly gruesome scene, someone’s eyes are gouged out, prompting Mail film critic Brian Viner to wonder yesterday whether the Bond franchise has been given a ‘licence to be sadistic’.
‘That scene is very strong,’ she says. ‘Everybody watching was like this . . .’ She freezes and feigns a terrified expression. ‘Oh my God, it’s almost pornographic this violence.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3287017/Bond-girl-Monica-m-looking-forward-menopause-think-new-film-s-violent-s-pornographic.html#ixzz3pZojk8hO
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