Barbara Bach

Barbara Bach (born Barbara Goldbach on August 27, 1946) is an American actress and former fashion model whose career spans more than five decades. Raised in the Rosedale neighborhood of Queens, she is the daughter of Howard Goldbach, a retired U.S. Army officer turned NYPD policeman, and Marjorie McKnight, a Catholic of Irish descent; the family’s cultural mix gave her a fluently bilingual upbringing, and she later mastered Italian while acquiring working knowledge of French and Spanish. After graduating from Dominican Commercial High School in 1964, she shortened her surname to Bach and entered the world of high‑fashion modeling, quickly becoming one of the 1960s most sought‑after faces with covers on Seventeen, Vogue, ELLE and international titles such as Gioia and Figurino; iconic photographer Richard Avedon shot her for the July 1966 issue of Vogue USA. Her transition to acting began in Italy, where she starred as Nausicaa in the epic TV series L'Odissea (1968) and appeared in several giallo and genre films, including Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971). The breakthrough came in 1977 when she was cast as Soviet spy Anya Amasova, the memorable Bond girl in The Spy Who Loved Me, a role she later described as challenging the chauvinistic image of James Bond. Following the Bond success, she acted in Force 10 from Navarone (1978) and made a cameo in a 1987 special Bond‑girls issue of Playboy, while also maintaining a presence in television and charitable endeavors.

Beyond the screen, Bach’s personal life has been marked by high‑profile marriages: she first wed Italian aristocrat Augusto Gregorini in 1966, with whom she had two children, Francesca and Gianni, before divorcing in 1975; in 1981 she married former Beatle drummer Ringo Starr, a partnership that has endured for more than four decades. Together they co‑founded charitable projects such as the Self Help Addiction Recovery Program (SHARP) and The Lotus Foundation, and both practice vegetarianism. Despite past battles with alcoholism and drug use, the couple entered rehab in 1988 and have remained sober ever since, using their public platform to advocate for recovery and humanitarian causes.