Giulietta da Vinci (listed in the film credits just as Cigar Girl) was a fictional assassin under the employ of the terrorist Renard. The character was portrayed by Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta and doubled by stuntwoman Sarah Donohue. She appeared in the 1999 James Bond film, The World Is Not Enough, and its accompanying novelization penned by Raymond Benson.
Biography
Posing as the secretary of the Swiss banker, Mr. Lachaise, Giulietta is present during his meeting with British agent James Bond in November 1999 at the Bilbao office of La Banque Suisse de L’Industrie. Bond is there retrieving money for Sir Robert King, a British Oil tycoon and friend of M. She offers a cigar to 007 and her employer. As she hands him a receipt for the money, she asks Bond if he would like to check her figures. Bond pauses and looks up as she is bending down. He responds, “Oh, I’m sure they are perfectly rounded.”
Bond overpowers Lachaise’s bodyguards and holds him at gunpoint. Just as Bond is about to get the name of an assassin, Lachaise is killed by a thrown knife in his neck by an escaping Giulietta. Bond and the Cigar Girl both escape from the building.
In a deleted scene of the film, we find that Giulietta is working for Renard, and she reveals that Bond is on the case. Renard gives her the task of taking him out and says that he trusts she won’t let him down. She was also told to allow Bond to escape the initial attack in Spain so the bomb would be delivered to MI6 headquarters. Bond returns to MI6 offices in London, England, to return the money to Sir Robert King. However, the money was a fertilizer bomb that kills King and blew a hole in the wall of the building. Through a hole in the wall, 007 spots Giulietta, watching the building from a Sunseeker boat on the River Thames. The assassin is wearing a red leather suit with a zipper down the front. She uses a machine gun to fire at Bond and then takes off down the Thames, with Bond pursuing a prototype Q-boat.
Trivia
In the film, Giulietta is the only identified female member of Renard’s crew. However, in early treatments of the film’s script, it was shown that Renard had several female minions in his inner circle. In one draft of the script, the scene that would ultimately become Renard’s entrance at the Devil’s Breath cave was originally written as a much more sordid encounter. The location initially occurred at Zukovsky’s Casino, in a champagne lounge (an environment reminiscent of Zukovsky’s club in GoldenEye) where Davidov would attempt to solicit a prostitute. The prostitute would then reveal herself as one of Renard’s assassins as Renard, and his men would appear from out of the shadows and ambush Davidov.
