Naomie, who plays Miss Moneypenny alongside Daniel Craig's 007, was approached by director Sam Mendes to try out for 2012's Skyfall but she only went along for fun because she thought she was too old and not buxom enough the play a Bond girl.

"I never thought I'd get it," Naomie, now 39, tells Britain's Radio Times magazine. "Bond girls have always been in their 20s, so I thought I was too old and I didn't think I had the right... assets!"

She did not discover she was playing Bond's loyal secretary Moneypenny until her third audition, and she was sworn to secrecy as her character's identity is not revealed until the very end of Skyfall.

"I told my mother, but no one else!," she adds.

Naomie credits the role with changing her career, saying, "I just finished filming another spy film Our Kind of Traitor opposite Ewan MCGregor and Damian Lewis. I wouldn't have got that role if I hadn't done Bond. Financiers look at you differently because you appeal to a much wider demographic. It's all about numbers."

Italian actress Monica Bellucci made history by becoming the oldest woman to be cast as a Bond girl at the age of 50 for the next installment Spectre.