Samantha Bond

Samantha Jane Bond (born 27 November 1961) is an English actress.

She played Miss Moneypenny in four James Bond films during the Pierce Brosnan era, and appeared in Downton Abbey as the wealthy widow Lady Rosamund Painswick, sister of Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham.

On television, she played "Auntie Angela" in the sitcom Outnumbered and the villain Mrs Wormwood in the CBBC Doctor Who spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures.

She also originated the role of "Miz Liz" Probert in the Rumpole of the Bailey series.

She is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Samantha Bond is the daughter of actor Philip Bond and TV producer Pat Sandys, and is the sister of the actress Abigail Bond and the journalist Matthew Bond.

Bond's paternal grandparents were Welsh.

She was brought up in London and Richmond-upon-Thames, in homes in Barnes and St Margarets.

She attended the Godolphin and Latymer School, and studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Bond's first acting role came as a student at age 21, in the original stage production of Daisy Pulls It Off, Denise Deegan's play about a girls school, which opened at Southampton's Nuffield Theatre in 1983.

Her earliest television roles took place the same year: she played Maria Rushworth (née Bertram) in the BBC mini-series adaptation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, and Rumpole's pupil in chambers "Miz Liz" Probert in the fourth series of Rumpole of the Bailey.

In 1985, she appeared as Julia Simmons in the BBC's televised adaptation of Agatha Christie's crime novel A Murder is Announced, part of the Miss Marple series.

Bond's work with the Royal Shakespeare Company (the RSC) began in 1987, when she performed in three of the company's stage productions: Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Hero and Leander, and Lorca's Women.

In 1989, Bond starred as Mary Mackenzie, a young Scottish woman, in the television adaptation of Oswald Wynd's novel The Ginger Tree, and was featured in Erik the Viking, an independent fantasy film with Tim Robbins in the title role.

She appeared in a 1990 adaptation of Agatha Christie's short story The Adventure of the Cheap Flat for the series Agatha Cristie's Poirot on ITV, starring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot.

In 1992, the RSC cast her as Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It, which she performed in their Stratford-upon-Avon and London theatres, and as Hermione in The Winter's Tale, also at the company's two theatres.

Bond was also seen on ITV in an episode of the "Inspector Morse" detective drama series based on novels by Colin Dexter, in 1992, and in a 1995 episode of Ghosts, an anthology series of ghost stories on the BBC.

She then toured with the RSC as Hermione in 1993.

From 1995 to 2002, Bond played Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary at MI6, in the four James Bond films with Pierce Brosnan as Agent 007: GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, and Die Another Day.

The role of Miss Moneypenny is the smallest role she ever played, yet the character remains a favorite among James Bond fans.

In a BBC interview, Bond remarked that she retired from the role when Pierce Brosnan stepped down as the lead.

In 1996, she portrayed Mrs. Weston in the television movie Jane Austen's Emma, starring Kate Beckinsale as Emma, a Meridian-ITV/A&E production that has been described as grittier and "more authentic" to Austen's story than the theatrical film starring Gwyneth Paltrow that was released the same year.

Bond starred as the titular Amy in the Royal National Theatre's West End production of David Hare's play Amy's View, opposite Judi Dench, in 1997 and into early 1998.

The television movie was broadcast in the US in 1997 on PBS.

Later in 1998, she co-starred in playwright Shelagh Stephenson's The Memory of Water, also in the West End.

In 1999, Bond and Dench reprised their roles in Amy's View on Broadway for a limited run at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Their performances garnered Bond a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play, and Dench the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play.

Hare received a special citation from the New York Drama Critics' Circle.

Bond revisited The Memory of Water, making her directorial debut on a short touring production of the play in 2000, the same year it won an Olivier award for Best New Comedy.

She also performed in numerous stage productions during the 2000s, among them:

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2001, as Hippolyta and Titania, again for the RSC; Donald Margulies's Pulitzer prize-winning Dinner with Friends, as Karen, opposite her Downton Abbey co-star Elizabeth McGovern and directed by McGovern's husband Simon Curtis, in 2001; The Vagina Monologues in 2002; and in Shakespeare's Macbeth, as Lady Macbeth opposite Sean Bean in the title role, on tour in 2002 and 2003.

Other stage performances include Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance in 2003; The Rubenstein Kiss in 2005; Michael Frayn's Donkey's Years at London's Comedy Theatre in 2006; and David Leveaux's West End revival of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at the Duke of York's Theatre, in 2009 as Hannah, alongside another Downton Abbey co-star, Dan Stevens.

Bond co-starred in 2004 with Peter Davison, as a married couple who uproot themselves to a remote island to save their marriage, in the ITV drama-comedy Distant Shores.

In 2007, she played the villain Mrs. Wormwood in the pilot episode of the BBC children's drama series The Sarah Jane Adventures, a spin-off of Doctor Who.

The next decade brought Bond onstage in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, as Mrs. Cheveley opposite her real-life actor husband Alexander Hanson as Mr. Cheveley, in 2010–2011, and as Nell in Passion Play by Peter Nichols in 2013.

However, she later appeared as Miss Moneypenny in an advertisement for London's 2012 Olympic bid, alongside previous Bond actor Roger Moore.

In 2014, Bond acted and sang in the West End musical production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, playing the role of Muriel Eubanks.

Bond stated in an interview that she had not sung on stage in over 30 years and was nervous at the prospect.

In a Radio Times review of the play, the critic described Bond as "stage royalty" and "hilarious."

In October and November 2017, Bond appeared in the English language premiere of Florian Zeller's modern French farce, The Lie, once again alongside her husband, Alexander Hanson, at an Off-West End theatre called the Menier Chocolate Factory.