While in the old days of Hollywood, the tendency was towards aggressive publicity to hide a gay actor’s sexuality from the audience, George Lazenby has claimed that in the case of James Bond, producers were keen to ensure they didn’t let a gay 007 onto the big screen at all.

The Express reports that in the new documentary Everything Or ­Nothing, which is about the making of the Bond films, Lazenby says that during the audition process, producers devised a practical test to find out his sexuality. “They sent a girl up to my apartment to make sure I wasn’t gay,” he says. “A little while later they had their answer. I sure as hell wasn’t.”

Indeed playing the spy proved a good way for George to be as heterosexual as possible. “Suddenly I was James Bond and you can imagine what that did to me,” says Lazenby. “I don’t want to brag but I had at least one girl a day… There was a tent on set where the stuntmen used to keep the mattresses they fell on in fight scenes. It was a good place to take a chick if you were in a hurry.”

It seems slightly odd to send a random woman to someone in the hope that they’re so heterosexual they simply can’t help themselves but sleep with them, as it would appear Lazenby would not only have lost out on the role not because he was gay, but also if he didn’t like one night stands. At least it worked for him though.

Well, it worked briefly, as Lazenby only got to make one Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, with most believing the former model to have been a bit of a failure in the role, with Sean Connery being lured back after George’s effort.

The documentary’s director, Stevan Riley, comments on Lazenby’s claim,  “I had no way of confirming if the story was true, I just left it in the edit and waited to see if Eon approved it.” Obviously they let it stand, so perhaps there is some truth in it.