Luciana Paluzzi is an Italian American actress. She is best known for playing S.P.E.C.T.R.E. assassin Fiona Volpe in the fourth James Bond film, Thunderball. In the film Thunderball she had auditioned for the part of the lead Bond girl, Dominetta "Domino" Petacchi, but producers cast Claudine Auger, changing the Domino character from an Italian to a Frenchwoman and renaming her Dominique Derval. Paluzzi's very first film was an uncredited walk-on part in Three Coins in the Fountain .
Shapely, reddish-haired Italian leading lady who followed a wave of 1950s Italian bombshells (Sophia Loren , Gina Lollobrigida ) into films, providing sexy but routine diversion in spy intrigue.
She was originally considered for the lead Bond girl Domino Derval in Thunderball , which was eventually played by former "Miss France" Claudine Auger. Instead, she played the evil secondary role of Fiona Volpe, the fetching, bouffant-haired nemesis who accidentally takes it in the back while dancing with 007, and is probably better remembered for it. Sean Connery s Bond has the memorable line directed to a couple sitting near the dance floor: "Do you mind if my friend sits this one out? Shes just dead."
Shes the daughter of an Italian army officer.
Has son Christian Halsey Solomon with actor Brett Halsey.
Appeared in the same year in "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and the James Bond film Thunderball ; in both she plays a villains associate, who attempts to seduce the hero, and dies when the hero pushes her into the line of fire in her own death trap.
Fluent in Italian and English.
As of 2005, she was living in Bel-Air, CA.
Friends with fellow former Bond girl Britt Ekland.
