Susie Vanner, 69, achieved worldwide fame in 1977 as a Bond girl, playing Log Cabin Girl opposite Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me. Her television career began as a schoolgirl, when she was a dancer on Ready Steady Go!. She later starred in the legendary Just Musk perfume commercial.
Raised by her single mother in Romford, east London, Vanner married property developer Warren Todd, 54, the stepson of reality TV star Lisa Vanderpump. The couple separated last year after 32 years of marriage. She lives in London.
How did your childhood influence your attitude to money?
My mother, Olive, worked as a dinner lady at my primary school. My dad left when I was a baby. I watched her struggle.
For holidays we went to Warners Holiday Camp in Dovercourt, near Harwich. I would win all the children’s talent contests. Mum found the money to take me to dancing classes, and ballet and tap have been in my blood ever since.
Did you receive pocket money?
My brother Clifford and I must have got pocket money, but at 15 I got a Saturday job in the Jane Norman clothes shop in Romford. My mum had written secretly to the producers of Ready Steady Go! and you were supposed to be over 16, but I won the dance competition on air.
So every week after school I’d be dashing to Liverpool Street station to get to Ready Steady Go!. I’d change out of my school uniform into something wonderful. I don’t remember getting any money: the prize was the pass to be on the show.
What was your first job?
After taking A-levels early at 17, I did a secretarial course. I saw that the songwriter Chris Andrews wanted to find a new singer because he had finished with Sandie Shaw. I went to see him and I made three singles for RCA, but didn’t earn any money. So I got music industry office jobs and did session singing.
How did you get your break inacting?
I met a photographer, who became my boyfriend, and he introduced me to a film agent. I asked: “Don’t you want me to go to drama school?” “No darling, don’t worry. We’ll start with television commercials and we’ll see how we go.”
Basically, I didn’t stop working. Thetelevision commercials were a hundred times more lucrative than the singing. And from the commercials I started getting work on ITV and BBC.
How did becoming a Bond girl in 1977 change your life?
I was asked to do all the promotional tours, so suddenly I was going to South America, Australia, Japan and South Africa, travelling first class with producer Cubby Broccoli, Roger Moore and big Richard Kiel, who played Jaws.
For The Spy Who Loved Me I was paid day rates, probably no more than £1,000 in total. I did get paid for the promotional tours to Japan and Australia. It gave me publicity as a Bond girl. My agent even told me off because I was worried that, by doing a glamorous Bond scene, I wouldn’t get any more serious dramatic parts.
I still get fan letters. With Bond I was happy and had enough money to live on, but I wasn’t booking holidays or anything like that.
What was the most lucrative work you did?
Commercials paid up to £200 a day and there were the repeat fees. When I was 21 television commercials let me move from Romford to Holland Park, west London.
What was the reason for being so careful with money?
My whole inspiration to work was that I wanted to end up independent of a man and to have my own money.
When I was a teenager my mum received a letter saying that we had to move out. We had a bungalow in Romford and we had to move into a council flat. I eventually bought my mum a beautiful bungalow by the sea in 1999 in Thorpe Bay, Essex.
Was there ever a time when you worried about paying the bills?
When I was independent on my own, I was fine. But when I was with Warren Todd as a student, I did worry. To economise I sold my car, sold all sorts of things, but then my husband and I managed to work through it.
How did your husband’s property company become so successful?
Warren worked at a property company for two years for very little money to learn the business. We were struggling to make ends meet and Warren set up his own business on an old school desk at his grandma’s house at the beginning of the recession at the end of the 1980s.
He was doing a few deals, but the problem was we had no cash flow. One day he came back from a meeting and said he had an amazing idea. He’d seen an empty vacated building, a bank on the corner of Kensington Church Street.
Because it was a recession, many buildings like that were up for sale. He contacted Barclays, who allowed him to sublet the building to stallholders as an impromptu market. It was an instant success, allowing us to live without fear or stress for a while. I suggested that he concentrate on Notting Hill. And so he started slowly buying up properties in Portobello Road. It all started from there.
What lifestyle was the property business able to support?
Our first luxury was to pay for membership of a waterski club in Oxford, where we had a caravan beside a lake. We both loved waterskiing, particularly my husband, who slalom waterskied. Our son, Ryan, could run around free with lots of other children.
When our son turned six we finally managed to afford to go to St Tropez – my favourite place in the world. We used to stay in little three-star hotels, gradually moving up to five-star ones, then we bought our house in the summer of 2000.
What has been your best financial decision?
The James Bond film was certainly not paying much more than the commercials I was in. For those I could typically earn £400 to £800 for filming and then the same again each time the campaign repeated.
One commercial for Lentheric’s Just Musk perfume ran for seven years, so I lived off that for years. In one commercial break all the commercials were mine, so they were definitely my most lucrative work.
In those days models couldn’t get Equity cards so they were using actresses, and I was able to do Camay Soap and beauty products because I had a photogenic face. From 1971 to 1984 I had continuous work. I was very lucky.
What was your worst financial decision?
Not to hang on to a box of Don’t Pity Me, my single with Chris Andrews. Copies of it are now going on eBay for£1,000.
What’s the best lesson money hastaught you?
Save it, hold on to it! It’s always best to have money in reserve. Keep some cash in hand for a rainy day.
Susie Vanner’s album, In These Shoes, isout now
