Susan Lucci says Playboy cover reveal ended her Bond girl dreams
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One look at the Playboy cover was all it took to realize that Susan Lucci was not playing the Bond girl role.
The “All My Children” legend revealed that she is ready for the coveted Bond girl role, despite meeting with producer Barbara Broccoli in New York.
“Well… yeah. I don’t know how close I got. They saw two people in New York; one was Kim Basinger and the other was me… It was a summer day. I went to the beautiful Broccoli town house… and I was so happy to be seen,” Lucci said. “Today.”
‘ALL MY CHILDREN’ STAR SUSAN LUCCI ATE ASPARAGUS FOR 10 DAYS TO FIT INTO THE ‘SEXY’ NIGHT
Susan Lucci said that she was a candidate for the coveted Bond girl role, but lost the role to Kim Basinger. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for AHA)
“A few weeks later I was in the hair and makeup room at ‘All My Children’ and they handed me a copy of Playboy magazine and there was Kim Basinger,” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Oh, okay then… Who’s getting the part. It’s not going to be me.'”
Basinger would grace the February 1983 cover as “007’s new woman,” co-starring with Sean Connery in “Never Say Never Again” and closing the door on what could have been Lucci’s Bond moment.
Actor Sean Connery portrays the role of James Bond alongside Kim Basinger and Barbara Carrera in a scene from the 1983 film “Never Say Never Again”. (Stanley Bielecki Film Collection/Getty Images)
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Years later, Lucci is still rewriting his own scripts.
In March 2026, the beloved soap opera star, who plays the titular character Erica Kane, opened up about everything from getting in shape after giving birth to finding balance after loss in her memoir “La Lucci.”
“I actually ate asparagus for 10 days before I had to go back to work a week early,” she told Fox News Digital. “I was so nervous about it. And on top of that, it was a tight, black, sexy nightgown. I was like, ‘Are they kidding?’ I thought. Even though I was so happy to go and play Erica Kane, I wondered: ‘Oh my God, I have to lose this weight.'”
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Actors (L-R) Susan Lucci and Lee Godart cuddle in bed in a scene from the daytime drama “All My Children.” (Robin Platzer/Getty Images)
“But it didn’t make me unhappy in any way. I just did what I had to do. That’s all.”
These days, Lucci’s approach is to eat less intensively, live cleaner.
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Susan Lucci says she competed with Kim Basinger for the Bond girl role and learned she lost the role after seeing her rival on the cover of Playboy magazine. (Nina Westervelt/Various)
He credited his discovery of Pilates in 1995 with flipping the script on a lifetime of indulgence.
“We were in New York most of the time during the filming of ‘All My Children,’ and anyone who knows anything about New York knows there is no shortage of restaurants,” he said. “Everyone delivered, and I was the instigator. I was starting to look at the menus at 8:30 in the morning – ‘Don’t be afraid. We could place our orders early.'”
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However, this mentality did not last long.
“But honestly, within a few weeks I wanted to eat completely clean… It wasn’t even a conscious choice. It was just my body wanting to be healthier, and it’s good to listen to your body.”
Fox News Digital’s Stephanie Nolasco contributed to this report.
