I was a Bond girl for Roger Moore and this is what he was really like on set

She has been a Bond girl, a Benny Hill girl and a Playboy Bunny, and has worked alongside many British comedy greats from Dick Emery to Frankie Howerd. But Anika Pavel, who starred alongside in The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977 didn’t always lead such a glamorous life.

The model turned actress turned writer, began life behind the Communist Iron Curtain in the former Czechoslovakia as Jarmila Kocvarova. Now she has written a book of essays “Encounter with the Future” about her jaw-dropping rags to riches life story that would be worthy of any film script.

Growing up after the war in the former Eastern bloc was hard for Anika and her family with little money and little hope of escaping their fate. “There were shortages of food of course but worse than that were the shortages of freedom. We couldn’t get out,” she says of her childhood home in Piestany, a town now part of Slovakia.

“We couldn’t travel. People we knew did manage to escape, swimming the Danube, but many died or were tortured. My mother Emilia wanted more for us. She was a great bookworm and she felt travel was the key to greater knowledge. Later when I managed to travel she was over the moon.”

However, growing up behind the Iron Curtain wasn’t without its black humour.

Anika recalls: “Under communism, toilet paper was quite often a scarce item. There was never enough of it to store up, so we used newspapers. We children were tasked with tearing the pages of the newspaper into squares, then crushing them in our hands before putting them into a shoebox that was then taken to the WC and placed within easy reach for the would-be occupant of the throne.

“There were certain pieces, with photographs of the government officials and members of the communist party, that my father kept for himself. And the pages with [Soviet leader] Leonid Brezhnev and his Czechoslovak lackeys’ pictures on them he saved for special occasions. My father was lactose intolerant but loved cheese. Every so often he would bow to the demands of his taste buds, with predictable results. Then it was Brezhnev and his crew’s time,” she laughs.

Encouraged by her mother, Anika managed to escape to the UK aged 18.

“A lady my mother knew had a son who had made it to England and I managed to get an exit visa to go as an au pair to Ipswich. It was November 10 1967, a month after my 18th birthday, I didn’t speak English and I was all alone.”

Her family were able to visit in the five months when in early 1968, conservative leader Antonin Novotny was ousted as the head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and he was replaced by Alexander Dubcek and citizens enjoyed a brief period of relative freedom.

But when the Russian tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in August 1968, all citizens were recalled back.

“I went to England as an au pair,” remembers Anika. “What was meant to be a short-term learning experience turned me into a refugee when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968. It was the most difficult decision of life deciding not to return. It was just the biggest turmoil for me and I still tear up thinking about that decision. I didn’t see my family for years. It was a very hard regime. But we had airmail, which was a little more expensive, but we would write to each other three times a week.”

Vowing to teach herself ten words of English a day Anika moved from Ipswich to London to see if those streets really were paved with Capitalist gold. “It was there I received a crash course in life. But with perseverance and a bit of luck, I survived and eventually thrived.”

Anika was working in a solicitor’s office when a friend showed her a newspaper competition looking for new models. Anika was one of eight girls selected and won a modelling course and fashion show. From there she went on to appear on dozens of magazine covers and did TV adverts in the Far East including one for the British Textile Council in Singapore.

“I would send postcards and photos to my mother from everywhere. She was thrilled I was travelling the world and would sit at home looking up the places in an Atlas.”

But modelling was a case of “feast or famine” so Anika supplemented her often precarious income by working as a bunny girl in a private club in Mayfair. She explains: “It was just waitressing in a tight uncomfortable costume really but I worked evenings so I could model in the day. I had to buy medication for my mother back home.

“I would work in the discotheque or VIP room or the little gift shop at 45 Park Lane sometimes selling souvenirs and Dustin Hoffman came in once. He was lovely. We talked about a film idea I had but nothing came of it in the end.”

Anika’s TV modelling and advertising work continued to grow and was a stepping stone into films and TV acting.

“Little by little I got to be known and I was eventually offered a small role in a James Bond movie,” she says.

Anika played “an Arabian beauty”, part of a Sheik’s harem in The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977. It was a non-speaking role and she didn’t get to kiss 007 but she made a lifelong friend in star .

“He was such a lovely man, so charming and kind. It didn’t matter how big or small your role was, he treated everyone the same,” she says.

“We didn’t actually spend much time together on set but there was a lot of travelling together to promote the film so I got to know him well and he was a truly decent man.”

Back home in Piestany, Czechslovakia, family and friends were of course prevented by the strict Communist censors from watching anything as decadent as a Bond movie but they somehow found a way.

“They lived quite close to Vienna so were somehow able to pick up a signal from there and watch it later on. A huge cheer went up when I came on screen. That film must have made a lot of money out of my little town. My dad was so proud. Years later I saw Roger at the 50th anniversary of Bond in New York and he came over for a chat. He was definitely my favourite Bond although I did quite like Pierce Brosnan too.

“It is wonderful to have played a small part in movie history. I think it would be great if we could have a female Bond next time though and I think Taylor Swift would make a brilliant Bond girl.”

Anika is equally warm about the other stars she worked with and said Benny Hill was a favourite.

The Hill’s Angel was accompanied by her dad, Jan, to an audition at Benny Hill’s house. Jan was over in the UK just before the 1968 invasion sent him back. “I told Benny my dad was outside and he invited him in and made him a cup of tea. My dad didn’t speak any English and Benny didn’t speak any Slovak but they somehow managed to have a conversation. I will always remember his kindness to my father. I enjoyed doing comedy. I was in the 1972 Dick Emery film Ooh… You Are Awful.”

In order to stay in the UK, Anika married an English friend, who she gives a false name to in her book and has been trying to contact again in recent times. “I don’t name him in the book because I didn’t have his permission but I owe him everything,” she admits.

The man later moved to America and remarried after he and Anika divorced and have since lost touch.

“When he was going to marry again I was asked to send my divorce papers which I did and the letter had a return address on it but I lost it and I haven’t been able to trace him since.”

Anika married for a second time, aged 28 to another American, a lawyer called Jim who was in London at the time. The couple went on to have two sons and a daughter living in the UK, Hong Kong and Monte Carlo before settling in Boston, Massachusetts, where they now have eight grandchildren and a ninth on the way.

Having loved writing as a child in Czechoslovakia and having always wanted to be an author Anika has since published a children’s book, her collection of essays that make up the memoir that is called Encounter with the Future and now aged 75 is working on a novel.

“I have had a wonderful life but I would really like to get in touch with the man who married me to help me stay in the UK to thank him for what he did. I hope he reads this and knows how grateful I am to him after all this time.”

Encounter With the Future is available on Amazon in paperback and kindle.