What some may not know is that in one James Bond flick, For Your Eyes Only, Caroline Cossey aka Tula was one of the James Bond girls albeit in a small walk-on shot and the first and only as far as we know transgender Bond Girl.
Born Barry Kenneth Cossey, she was diagnosed as being intersexed and at age 17 began hormonal therapy and in 1974 had sex reassignment surgery. Cossey identifies herself as transsexual rather than transgender.
As a model using the name Tula she wowed those her saw her and was featured in a Playboy magazine shoot in 1981. She had appeared in several magazines such as Harper's Bazaar as a top rated glamour model.
However she was "outed" by the UK rag News of The World after her appearance in the Bond film and with the headline, "James Bond Girl Was A Boy".
So upset was she with the outing she contemplated suicide.
But to her credit she fought back and came out with her best selling book, I Am Woman in 1982 followed by a second book in 1991 My Story. She appeared in Playboy a second time in 1991 with a pictorial spread.
Cossey has been married to Canadian David Finch since 1992 and lives near Atlanta, GA.
On June 23, 2015 Cosmopolitan magazine wrote an article about Tula and her thanking Hugh Hefner for "giving her a platform" and being Playboy's first trans model.
