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Alison Doody

Alison Doody has a screen presence built on poise and restraint. Born in Dublin on 11 November 1966, she began working as a model after being approached by a photographer. Commercial work followed, but Doody set clear boundaries, avoiding glamour and nude assignments—a choice she carried into acting. Her screen career began with a small role as Jenny Flex in the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill. Just 18 at the time, she became the youngest Bond girl to date. Early parts quickly showed her range: she played IRA member Siobhan Donovan in A Prayer for the Dying, appeared as Lilias in the 1987 television adaptation of The Secret Garden, and took her first lead role as Sapsorrow in an episode of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. After appearing opposite Pierce Brosnan in Taffin, Doody landed her most prominent film role as Austrian archaeologist and Nazi sympathiser Elsa Schneider in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Acting opposite Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, she brought a cool, composed quality to one of the film’s central roles. Her work with Roger Moore, Connery and Brosnan also gave her the unusual distinction of appearing alongside three actors who played James Bond. Doody later co-starred with Jonathan Pryce in the miniseries Selling Hitler and played Flannery, girlfriend and agent to Charlie Sheen’s character, in Major League II. After almost a decade away from the screen, she returned in The Actors, followed by work in King Solomon’s Mines, Waking the Dead and the comedy-drama Beaver Falls. She also appeared in We Still Kill the Old Way and entered the Indian film industry with RRR. It is a career with long pauses and selective returns rather than constant visibility, but Doody’s best-known performances remain defined by the same assurance that marked her earliest screen work.