May Day played by Grace Jones in A View to a Kill, 1985
In 1985’s A View to a Kill, James Bond took on the maniacal villain Max
Zorin, a French industrialist who plans to rig a series of explosions in
California’s Silicon Valley to cause an earthquake, therby allowing him
to take over and corner the microchip market. Christopher Walken played
the evil Zorin, and Jones played Zorin’s mysterious body guard.
Born in Jamaica, Grace Jones moved to New York as a teenager and
worked as a model before her career as a vocalist. Possessing a rare
contralto voice, Jones started recording dance hall songs in the late
1970s and developed a devoted following of gay men. She was also an Andy
Warhol muse, and he is reported to have photographed her extensively.
It was in the 1980s that Jones adopted her signature androgynous look
that most people associate her with. At this time she was still
recording, but in 1985 she became a bigger star because of her role in A
View to a Kill. This movie was the last movie to feature Roger Moore in
the role of James Bond. In 1985, 1986, and 1987, Jones was nominated for
a Saturn Award, presented each year by the Academy of Science Fiction,
Fantasy, and Horror in an attempt to draw attention to these genres.
A View to a Kill was not the first film role for Jones. In 1973 she
played a drug runner in the movie Gordon’s War. She was also in Conan
the Destroyer in 1984 as Zula the Amazon. She has continued to act
almost up till the present day, and she released a new album, Hurricane,
in 2008, for which she did a world tour, with 24 shows in Europe and
three in North America.
