The Bond girl Triple X, Barbara Bach, didn’t need to be saved from the spy who loved her. Not her knight in shining armor, but her rock star husband, Sir Richard Starkey, better known as Ringo Starr. Bach, an actor and model who is now 75 years old, was at the top of her game when she played the love interest and possible enemy of Roger Moore’s sexy 007 agent James Bond in the 1977 movie The Spy Who Loved Me.Someone in 1983 wrote in People that Bach called Bond “a chauvinist pig who uses girls to shield him against bullets.”
In an interview with People in 1973, the year he appeared in his first Bond movie, Live and Let Die, Moore agreed. He said, “Bond, like myself, is a male chauvinist pig.” It’s been my life’s work to get women out of underwear and bras. Before making The Spy Who Loved Me, Bach was in a number of Italian movies. In Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971), an Italian murder mystery, she shared the screen with two other Bond Girls, Claudine Auger from Thunderball (1965) and Barbara Bouchet from Casino Royale (1967).
As a Bond girl, Bach made the brunette beauty an all-time favorite and a big star, which was great for her playing career. After playing Major Anya Amasova, a made-up KGB agent, she had lead roles in Robert Downey Sr.’s 1980 movie Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy and Dennis Quaid, Shelley Long, and Ringo Starr, who is now 82 years old, laughed their way through the comedy Caveman. Neanderthal, played by Starr, is in love with Lana, played by Bach. In the end, he dumps her for another woman.
What happened in real life is nothing like what’s in the script. In the airport in Los Angeles, they saw each other on their way to the Mexico set of the movie Caveman. “A lot of garbage has been written about us, none of it interesting,” Bach said in a 1981 Playboy photo spread (People). “The truth is that we didn’t get together until the very end of Caveman.” When we were working together, we got along fine, but we each had our own friends. Soon after, in the last week of filming, it happened all of a sudden. We went from dating to being in love.
The Beatles star talked about his wife to the Irish Examiner in 2021. They got married more than forty years ago. “I love her. From the first time I saw her at LAX in 1980, I loved her. I was at the airport checking in, and she was there with her boyfriend. We were both going to Mexico to work on the same project. “And that’s how it went,” Star remembered. “All I can say is that I’m thankful she’s in my life.”
Starr, a bright star, is the drummer for The Beatles, the most important band of all time. And Bach was in the crowd at a Beatles show at New York’s Shea Stadium in 1965. As a member of the Fab Four, he played with Paul McCartney, George Harrison, the late John Lennon, and himself. Bach says she wasn’t a huge Beatles fan, even though she was there. She went with her sister Marjorie and her friend Joe Walsh. Marjorie loved the band so much that she wore a wig to the event.
In 1981, Bach talked to People and said, “My sister Marjorie was crazy about the Beatles.” “I liked the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and Ray Charles.” Marjorie later married Walsh, who in 1975 became the guitarist for the Eagles. Walsh and his brother-in-law also played together in the live rock band Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. Bach and Starr got married on April 27, 1981, just a few months after Lennon died. McCartney and Harrison were also there.Since then, they haven’t been apart.
Before they got married, they were in a crash that almost killed them. The car they were driving swerved to miss a truck and rolled over twice before stopping. After the accident, Starr said, “We gave up any plans to be apart.” We’ve only had five-day breaks so far, which was too long. I want to spend all of my time with Barbara. In 1988, they both went to rehab together and have been clean ever since.When the cute couple marked their 40th wedding anniversary in 2021, Starr posted a picture from their wedding day with the words, “It was 40 years ago today.” McCartney and Harrison are also in the picture. “Yes yes yes, the love of my life said yes yes yes.”
Starr has three kids with her late wife Maureen Cox and Bach has two with her ex-husband Augusto Gregorini. Their love goes beyond their mixed family; they also run a charity called The Lotus Foundation. The organization helps with projects that help animals, people who abuse drugs, people who are homeless, and people with cancer. Starr, who is also an artist, gives all of the money she makes from sales to the group.
If they could, they’d definitely be together “Eight Days a Week.” Bach said, “I love the man, and that’s it.” Starr adds, “You can’t get away… I think I love Barbara just as much now as I did when we first met. I’m so grateful that she does and that we’re still together.