Madeline Smith (born 2 August 1949) is an English actress. After working as a model in the late 1960s, she went on to appear in many television series and stage productions, as well as comedy and horror films, in the 1970s and 1980s.
Smith played Bond girl Miss Caruso in Live and Let Die (1973), but also had larger roles in the horror films The Vampire Lovers (1970), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Tam Lin (1970), Theatre of Blood (1973) and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974), and comedy films including Up Pompeii (1971), Up the Front (1972) and Carry On Matron (1972) among others. She also appeared in the films The Killing of Sister George (1968), Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You (1970), The Amazing Mr. Blunden (1972), and the musical film Take Me High (1973) with Cliff Richard.
After leaving the acting profession in the mid-1980s to raise her family, she returned to acting in 2011.
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Early life
Smith was born in Hartfield, Sussex, the only child of Robert and Ursula Smith (née Boas). Her father owned an antiques shop and painting restoration business near Kew Gardens, and her Swiss mother was a translator. Smith received a convent school education.
In her late teens, she held a temporary job at Biba, a boutique located on Kensington High Street, London. At the instigation of Barbara Hulanicki, founder of Biba, Smith became a model.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she was regularly featured in the work of Disc cartoonist J. Edward Oliver, who on one occasion devoted an entire strip to her entitled "The Life and Habits of the Madeline Smith".
Career
Smith's first screen role was a small part in the film Escalation (1968), followed by a role in The Mini-Affair (1967), although the latter was released first. Smith first worked for Hammer Film Productions in Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), billed as Maddy Smith and playing an East End prostitute. Among her other film appearances, she played opposite Ava Gardner in Tam Lin, Peter Cushing in The Vampire Lovers and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Diana Dors in The Amazing Mr Blunden, Frankie Howerd in Up Pompeii and Up the Front, and Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood. In 1972, Smith appeared in Carry On Matron in a scene alongside Hattie Jacques, Barbara Windsor, and Joan Sims.
In 1973, she played the Bond girl Miss Caruso in the post-opening titles sequence of Live and Let Die, the first James Bond film starring Roger Moore. Smith's role is therefore significant as Miss Caruso is the first Bond girl of the Roger Moore era. Smith and Moore take part in a scene in which he unzips her dress with a magnetic wristwatch. She was recommended for the role by Moore himself, having previously appeared with him in an episode of the television series The Persuaders!.
Smith's numerous stage credits include working with US director Charles Marowitz on Blue Comedy (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford) and The Snob (at Marowitz's Tottenham Court Road venue the Open Space). She also acted opposite Alec Guinness in the original West End production of Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus (playing Felicity Rumpers), supported Frankie Howerd again in the Volpone adaptation The Fly and the Fox (Churchill Theatre, Bromley), played Elma in a Cambridge Theatre Company revival of Frederick Lonsdale's Canaries Sometimes Sing, and spent two years playing the female lead in Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap at the St Martin's Theatre.
Her television credits include Doctor at Large (1971), The Two Ronnies (appearing in the serial Hampton Wick, 1971), Clochemerle (1972), His and Hers (1970) with Tim Brooke-Taylor, Casanova '73 (1973) with Leslie Phillips, Steptoe and Son (1974), The Howerd Confessions (1976), Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (1980), and The Steam Video Company (1984). She also featured in two episodes of All Creatures Great and Small, as two different characters (as Angela Farmer in "Pride of Possession" (1978) and as Anne Grantley in the 1983 Christmas special). She was a member of the regular cast of the BBC2 series The End of the Pier Show (1974) and In the Looking Glass (1978) alongside satirists John Wells and John Fortune and composer Carl Davis. Smith also starred in The Passionate Pilgrim (1984), which was the final screen appearance of Eric Morecambe.
Personal life
Smith's partner was the actor David Buck, whom she met in 1974. They were together until he died from cancer in 1989. The couple had a daughter, born in 1984.
