Barbara Bach the actress of Bond Girl Triple X, wasn’t needing to be rescued from the spy who loved her. Instead, she was looking for her nobleman in a bright shield her- rock musician husband Sir Richard Starkey, better known as Ringo Starr.
Bach now 75, first appeared in Hollywood in 1977. ”The Spy Who Loved Me” took her career to its highest peak when she performed as the love interest, and potential adversary, to the womanizing 007 agents, James Bond played by Roger Moore.
Bach referred to Bond as “a chauvinist pig who uses girls to shield him against bullets” as per the 1983 story in People.
Roger Moore admitted that 1973, was the year he performed in his first Bond film, Live and Let Die, he said in an interview with People, “Bond, like myself, is a male chauvinist pig. All my life I’ve been trying to get women out of brassieres and pants.”
Earlier to filming The Spy Who Loved Me, Bach had roles in Italian films, one with other Bond Girls–Claudine Auger from Thunderball (1965) and Barbara Bouchet from Casino Royale (1967)– in Black Belly of the Tarantula, a 1971 Italian murder-mystery.
No doubt Bach’s outstanding performance as a Bond girl took her towards a career that was covered with gold.
She played Major Anya Amasova, the fictional character of KGB, she had leading roles in Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy, a 1980 film directed by Robert Downey Sr, and in Caveman, a 1981 slapstick comedy where she co-starred with Dennis Quaid, Shelley Long, and Ringo Starr, now 82.
Starr played the Neanderthal who lusted after Lana, the role played by Bach but in the end, he cheated on her and chose another fellow.
The script truly portrays real-life realities.
The couple saw each other for the first time at Los Angeles airport, going to Mexico for the caveman shoot.
Featured in a 1981 Playboy pictorial, Bach said, “A lot of garbage has been written about us, none of it interesting,” she said. “The truth is, we weren’t together until the very end of Caveman. Working, we got along fine, but we each had other people, our respective friends. Then, all of a sudden, within a week–the last week of shooting–it just happened. We changed from friendly love to being in love.”
While speaking with the Irish Examiner in 2021, Starr effusively talked about his wife, whom he married 40 years ago.
“I love the woman. I have loved her since I first saw her at LAX in 1980. She was at the airport with a boyfriend and I was at the airport checking in, and we happened to be going to Mexico to do the same movie. And that’s how it happened,” Star recalled. “I’m blessed she’s in my life, that’s all I can ever say.”
Starr was the drummer of the most prominent band of all time, The Beatles. At New York Shea Stadium in 1965, on a Beatless show, Bach was in the audience. Where as part of the Fab Four, he played alongside the late John Lennon George Harrison, and Paul McCartney.
Bach said that she was not a fan of the Beatles band and she was only there due to her only for friend Joe Walsh and her sister Marjorie, both were mad about the Beatless band that she showed up wearing a Beatles wig.
“My sister Marjorie was crazy about the Beatles,” Bach told People in a 1981 interview. “I liked [Bob] Dylan, Ray Charles and the Rolling Stones.”
After some time Marjorie married Walsh, who became the Eagles guitarist in 1975. Walsh also played with his brother-in-law in Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, a live rock group.
Only one month later Lennon was killed, and Bach and Starr married on April 27, 1981, with a guest McCartney and Harrison.
The couple has been entangled since.
Just before the couple wed, they were in a deadly crash, where the car they were driving weaved to stay away from a truck and rolled over twice before coming to a stop.
Starr said after the accident, “We decided we wouldn’t spend any time apart. So far the longest break was five days, and that was too long. I want to live every minute with Barbara.”
They also entered rehabilitation together in 1988 and have been not intoxicated since.
When the lovely couple celebrated their 40th anniversary in 2021, Starr posted a photo from their wedding day, McCartney and Harrison are also shown in the image.
He added the caption, “It was 40 years ago today The love of my life said yes yes yes.”
Although the couple with stepchildren and stepparents- Starr has three kids with his late wife Maureen Cox and Bach has two with her former husband, Augusto Gregorin.
They also run a foundation named The Lotus Foundation. The foundation works for the well-being of animals with active addiction, homelessness, and cancer. It’s really admirable, that Starr, being an artist donates 100 percent of sales to the organization.
There’s no question that if they could, they’d be together “Eight Days a Week.”
“I love the man, and that’s it,” Bach said.
Starr adds, “There’s no escape … I think I love Barbara as much [today] as I did [when we met] – and I’m beyond blessed that she loves me and we’re still together.”
The love between a couple is immortal. Their charity work is also unforgettable.