Susan Lucci says Playboy cover reveal ended her Bond girl dreams

One look at a Playboy cover was all it took for Susan Lucci to realize she did not land the Bond girl role.

The “All My Children” legend revealed she was up for a coveted Bond girl role, even meeting with producer Barbara Broccoli in New York.

“Well… yes. Well, I don’t know how close I got. They saw two people in New York — one was Kim Basinger and one was me… It was a summer day. I went to the beautiful Broccoli townhouse… and I was so happy to be seen,” Lucci said during an appearance on “Today.”

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Susan Lucci says she was up for a coveted Bond girl role but lost it to Kim Basinger. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for AHA)

“Then a couple of weeks later, I was in the hair and makeup room of ‘All My Children’ — they handed me a copy of Playboy magazine, and there was Kim Basinger,” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Oh, OK then.… Kim is getting the part. It won’t be me.’”

Basinger would go on to grace the February 1983 cover as “007’s new woman,” starring opposite Sean Connery in “Never Say Never Again” — and closing the door on what might have been Lucci’s Bond moment.

Actor Sean Connery appears as James Bond alongside Kim Basinger and Barbara Carrera in a scene from the 1983 film “Never Say Never Again.” (Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty Images)

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Decades later, Lucci is still rewriting her own script.

In March 2026, the beloved soap opera star — who famously portrayed Erica Kane — opened up about everything from getting into shape after childbirth to finding balance after loss in her memoir “La Lucci.”

“I really did eat asparagus for 10 days straight before I had to go back to work a week early,” she told Fox News Digital, admitting, “I was very nervous about it. And on top of it, it was a tight, black, sexy nightgown. I thought, ‘Are they kidding?’ While I was really happy to go play Erica Kane, I just wondered, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve got to lose this weight.’”

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Susan Lucci and Lee Godart cuddling in bed in a scene from the daytime soap “All My Children.” (Robin Platzer/Getty Images)

“But in no way did it make me unhappy. I just did what I had to do. That’s all.”

These days, Lucci’s approach is less crash diet, more clean living.

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Susan Lucci says she competed with Kim Basinger for a Bond girl role and learned she lost the part after seeing her rival on the cover of Playboy magazine. (Nina Westervelt/Variety)

She credited discovering Pilates in 1995 for flipping a lifelong script of indulgence.

“We were in New York for most of the time filming ‘All My Children,’ and anybody who knows anything about New York knows that there is no lack of restaurants,” she said. “Everybody delivered, and I was the instigator. I’d start looking at menus at 8:30 in the morning — ‘Don’t be afraid. We could put our orders in early.’”

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However, that mindset didn’t last.

“But honestly, within a couple of weeks, I just wanted to eat completely clean… It wasn’t even a conscious choice. It was my body wanting to be healthier, and it’s good to listen to your body.”

Fox News Digital’s Stephanie Nolasco contributed to this report.