Barbara Bach, who played Soviet agent Anya Amasova opposite Roger Moore in 1977’s “The Spy Who Loved Me,” turned 80 this week, with Wikipedia’s sourced biography placing her birthday on August 27 or 28, 1946.

Key Points

• Bach was cast as the film’s Bond girl, code-named Agent XXX, only four days before principal photography began, after United Artists staffer Danton Rissner lobbied to get her a screen test, according to Wikipedia’s production history of the film.
• She largely stepped back from film acting in the years after, marrying Ringo Starr in 1981 and building a life outside Hollywood’s spotlight.
• Production designer Ken Adam built an entirely new soundstage at Pinewood Studios, the 007 Stage, at a reported cost of $1.8 million, to house the film’s supertanker set and a water tank holding roughly 1.2 million imperial gallons.
• Rosemary Burrows served as the film’s wardrobe supervisor, working with tailor Angelo Roma and shirtmaker Frank Foster on the production’s costuming, according to Bond Suits’ wardrobe breakdown of the film.

A production built to outdo everything before it

“The Spy Who Loved Me” arrived at a pivotal moment for the Bond franchise — the first film after producer Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman’s split, and Roger Moore’s third outing as 007. It needed to prove the series could still deliver spectacle without its original creative partnership intact, and the production leaned hard into scale to do it.

The centerpiece was Ken Adam’s design for the villain’s supertanker interior, which required constructing the 007 Stage, a soundstage large enough to house a full-scale set and a water tank holding roughly 1.2 million imperial gallons, at a reported cost of $1.8 million, according to Wikipedia’s sourced account of the production. Adam drew on curved, geometric shapes for the Soviet-office sets, citing filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein as an influence on the visual approach.

Bach’s casting happened almost as an afterthought to that scale. She auditioned expecting a supporting part and only landed the lead Bond-girl role after Rissner pushed for a screen test, joining the production just four days before cameras rolled — a compressed timeline that left little room for the extended wardrobe fittings a production this size would typically schedule. Wardrobe supervisor Rosemary Burrows oversaw the costuming, working alongside tailor Angelo Roma and shirtmaker Frank Foster, credits that place the film’s clothing in the hands of the same craftsmen who shaped Bond’s look across the Moore era.

Bach appeared in nearly thirty films across her career before largely receding from acting, marrying Starr in 1981 and keeping a low industry profile in the decades since — a contrast to how visible Agent XXX remains as one of the most recognized Bond-girl performances of the 1970s.