Barbara Carrera Biography

Barbara Carrera (born Barbara Kingsbury on December 31, 1945) is a Nicaraguan American film and television actress and former model. She is best known for her roles as Bond girl Fatima Blush in Never Say Never Again and as Angelica Nero on the soap opera Dallas.

Early life

Barbara Kingsbury was born in San Carlos, Ro San Juan, Nicaragua. Some sources give her birth year as 1947 or 1951, but most list 1945. Although she prefers to say 1953, public records state 1944. Her mother, Florencia Carrera, was a Nicaraguan of European and Native ancestry, and her father, Louis Kingsbury, was a U.S. employee of the American embassy in Nicaragua. Her parents separated when she was seven.

Carrera had at least one elder half-sibling, a sister, Maisie Kingsbury.

Sometime after the age of ten, Carrera moved to the United States to live with her father, who placed her in a school in Memphis. She moved to New York at the age of fifteen.

Career

Kingsbury began a career as a model at the Eileen Ford agency at the age of 17, at which point she changed her last name to her mother's maiden name, Carrera. In 1972, she appeared on the screen in a publicity role for the Chiquita bananas. Her first film role was as a fashion model in Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970), which fared poorly at the box office. In 1976, she earned her first Golden Globe nomination ("New Star of the Year -- Actress") for her role in The Master Gunfighter. She later played in such films as The Island of Dr. Moreau, Lone Wolf McQuade, Condorman, Point of Impact, Tryst and Embryo. For her portrayal of the villainess Fatima Blush in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again, she earned a 1984 Golden Globe nomination for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture". She worked opposite Laurence Olivier in Wild Geese II the following year.

On television, she played a part in the soap opera Dallas as Angelica Nero, and more prominently, in the historical miniseries Centennial in 1978 and Masada (opposite Peter O'Toole and Peter Strauss) in 1981. These roles brought her to the mainstream attention of American audiences. She also starred as Emma Forsayth in the miniseries Emma: Queen of the South Seas in 1988.

Carrera has appeared on the pages and covers of such magazines as Vogue, Paris Match, Harper's Bazaar, and twice posed for Playboy (July 1973 and March 1982).

In 1997, she was appointed ambassador-at-large for Nicaragua by then-president Arnoldo Alemn.

She is also an artist and her work has been showcased in the Makk Galleries in Beverly Hills, California since the 1980s, and the Roy Miles Gallery in London, England. In May 2002, her works were exhibited at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum and have typically been sold for up to $8,000.

Carrera has not appeared in films or television since 2004.

Personal life

Carrera has been married and divorced three times, her spouses being:

• Otto Kurt Freiherr von Hoffman, a German nobleman. They married in New York City in 1966 (religiously in 1969) and divorced in 1972 (religiously in 1983).
• Uva Harden (born 1941), a German fashion model and actor. Married in 1972, they divorced in July 1976.
• Nicholas Mark Mavroleon, a Greek shipping magnate, a few years her junior, who is the younger and only surviving son of Manuel Basil Mavroleon (aka "Bluey") by his second wife, Gioconda de Gallardo y Castro. They married on 16 March 1983, in Clark County, California, and later divorced.

She has no children.

Filmography