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Madeline Smith was born on 2 August 1949 in Hartfield, Sussex, England.
In the 1960s, she modelled and worked at Biba's, a fashion house in High Street, Kensington, London, and it was at this shop that she was approached by the makers of the film Escalation (1968) around 1967.
For a period in the early 1970s Smith consistently appeared in photos in the press and managed to raise many a male heartbeat with her innocent looking English Rose doll face. In actual fact, she was so popular during that time that comic strip artist J. Edward Oliver regularly featured her and her talents in his ongoing series of strips. He once even designed an entire one-page comic about "The Life and Habits of Madeline Smith". When Smith finally complained about her portrayal, Oliver stopped drawing her… but not before drawing a final farewell strip about the call he received from her. .
Though she’s one of the ladies who managed the Hammer/Bond ("Live and Let Die")/Carry On ("Matron") hat trick, only Hammer – the studio that discovered her with "Taste the Blood of Dracula" (1969) - really took full advantage of her status and wrote reasonably large parts for her in "The Vampire Lovers" (1970), and as the mute girl Angel in "Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell" (1974). However, in most other movies she gets very little exposure.
She is probably best recognizable as Miss Caruso, the beautiful young Italian agent sleeping with James Bond in the opening of "Live and Let Die" (1973) whose blue dress zipper meets its match in Bond's magnetic watch. Her portrayal of a Bond girl differs significantly from other renditions of Bond girls - while most actresses tend to portray Bond girls as cynical, world weary and knowing, Smith portrayed Miss Caruso, an Italian agent, as sweet, vulnerable and innocent, qualities generally not associated with Bond girls. Prior to this, she had worked with Roger Moore in an early TV appearance and he recommended her for the role.
Away from Hammer, Smith’s other notable genre appearances were in "Theatre of Blood" and "Silent Night, Deadly Night". She was more prominently featured in a string of typical British sex comedies that often gave her a chance to show off her ample physique and also starred fellow Hammer Girl Julie Ege: "Up Pompeii", "The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins" and ""Percy’s Progress. She also appeared in "Up The Front" and "The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones."
Her television acting credits included The Two Ronnies, Clochemerle, Doctor in the House, The Steam Video Company, and His and Hers with Tim Brooke-Taylor. She was a member of the regular cast for the BBC2 series The End of the Pier Show (1974) and In The Looking Glass (1978), along with John Wells, John Fortune, and Carl Davis.
She also played the character of Mollie on stage in Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap.
She was married to actor David Buck (The Mummy’s Shroud) who passed away from cancer at the age of 53 in 1989. She has one child.
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