Jill St. John is another famous actress that a lot of people in the modern era might have forgotten or don’t know about to begin with. This is the troubling thing about the movie business even if it’s a common occurrence that doesn’t have chance of being halted; things move on at a pace that’s quicker than the eye can blink sometimes. Stars like Jill have their moment in the sun for as many years as it can last and then seem to fade out as other stars start to shine a little brighter. Thankfully Jill is a rather intelligent woman and managed to find a way to create a stable and well-developed life away from the camera for a while before coming back, as she took a break from acting after 2002 and focused on her personal life and an array of interests that she fully enjoyed for a while. The decision to come back wasn’t so much odd as it was curious since she had a very peaceful home and a great number of hobbies to keep her busy.
Of course some people might tend to miss the life of a star after a while.
Her mother was the one that changed her last name.
Her given name at birth was Jill Arlyn Oppenheim. Without being mean or cruel it does kind of sound like the opening lyric to a favored song, but her mother believed that she might need something that sounded more appealing and thus chose Jill St. John. It does have at least a little more dignity to it and rolls off the tongue quite a bit easier. A person might be surprised at how many people in Hollywood have changed their names in order to sound more professional, or at least different than their real names might be. Some people are actually embarrassed by their surnames or have decided to switch to be more marketable or more impressive. It’s hard to blame some of them but it’s also a mark of pride to use your own name at times no matter what it sounds like. But despite all that this obviously worked for her since she did manage to get the kind of attention she wanted after a while and her name was a lot easier to remember.
She started acting at age 16.
She was signed to a seven-year contract and was making $200 per week. That might not sound like a lot but if you consider the time period in which she came to prominence and the fact that she was so young, and that women have rarely ever earned as much as men in such roles, then you’d understand that it was something that she was probably grateful for even if she didn’t fully agree with it. Back then $200 still went a much longer way than it’s modern-day equivalent seems to go and with her parents no doubt still taking care of her career it was likely socked away or used to further her career in one way or another. As she continued to gain more experience she managed to pick up more roles and continued to build her career as her fame kept rising. It wasn’t really until one certain role however that she finally hit the pinnacle of her career, one that a lot of women would likely give their eye teeth for, figuratively-speaking.
She was the first American woman to play a Bond girl.
Bond girls were rarely ever American until after Jill became one in 1971, and even now you should be able to reckon that there still haven’t been a lot of American Bond girls as opposed to others. It’s understandable, Bond is after all a British spy and he deals with a lot of other nationalities throughout his adventures and therefore a lot of the women he meets, Bond girls, are bound to be of different nationalities. But in truth this is where the bulk of her fame has resided since being a Bond girl has been, for many women, a highlight in their career that they and many fans have likely never forgotten. While for many women it might have been a short stint in a movie others were allowed to stick around for almost the entire project and therefore had a lot of exposure on film. Jill got to act opposite of Sean Connery when he played the infamous 007 and has been remembered for it ever since. That alone is one reason why many people might still recall who she is and what she did to contribute to Hollywood.
It’s very easy to forget a lot of faces if they’re not being constantly shown on the big or small screens and in Jill’s case it’s very easy to assume that her absence allowed many people to just up and forget about her. But the truth is that she’s still around, and she’s still active as her bio indicates.
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