Jamaican Marguerite LeWars Gordon has heaped accolades on the late actor Sean Connery with whom she shared screen time in the film Dr No, the first instalment of the James Bond movie franchise which was filmed in Jamaica in 1962.

The former beauty queen, who was crowned Miss Jamaica in 1961 and now calls Trinidad and Tobago home, told the Jamaica Observer that she was extremely saddened when she heard of his death and recalled his kind-hearted nature on the set of the film.

“I was so sorry to wake up to the news that he had passed on. He was such a fabulous man and very kind to me when we did Dr No. I had never done anything like that before, never acted in a film, and he was just so kind to me even when I forgot some of my lines, which were not many, he was still such a gentleman. I was so lucky to have him as a co-star on my first and last film. My one disappointment is that I never had the opportunity to see him again… but I have absolutely fond memories of him and that whole experience,” she said during a telephone interview.

LeWars Gordon shared that, incidentally, she is currently involved in a project for the British company Autographica and is signing 200 photographs of herself in Dr No for distribution.

“I have worked with them before, and it just so happens that I am doing it again at the time Sir Sean has passed. They have asked me to take photographs of me signing the photos so persons will know I actually signed them. I had to tell them I definitely don’t look the same. I was 22 when I did the film and now I am 80,” she said.

Dr No was filmed on location in the Corporate Area as well as in Ocho Rios, St Ann. LeWars Gordon played newspaper photographer Annabel Chung alongside Connery, Ursula Andress and Jack Lord. A number of other Jamaicans had both speaking and non-speaking roles in the groundbreaking film including Reggie Carter, Eric Coverley, Louis Marriott, Carey Robinson, and musicians Byron Lee and Count Prince Miller.

In a previous Observer interview, LeWars Gordon noted that initially she had been asked to lie on a bed, wrapped in a sheet and kiss a strange man, but she made her disapproval known.

“I was disgusted… I was not involved in that stuff. So that had to be scrapped. I had very high principles,” she said.

Her principles rose to the fore once again at the film’s wrap party held at Morgan’s Harbour in Kingston,

“The director tried to be fresh, so I slapped him in the face twice. I wasn’t interested in the casting couch… And they did a voice over. So that’s not my voice in the movie,” she said.