Barbara Carrera -
Celebrity Artist Successful In Both Art And Acting

By Ken Hall

Internationally acclaimed actress Barbara Carrera—best known for her role as the mesmerizing lethal assassin “Fatima Blush” in the 1983 James Bond movie Never Say Never Again—is also an accomplished artist. Her talent encompasses portraiture, landscapes and still life.

“I was always an artist, long before I became an actress or a celebrity,” Ms. Carrera said from her home in Los Angeles. “I’d hate for people to think, ‘Oh, another celebrity trying to be an artist.’” Indeed, Ms. Carrera’s art has been showcased since the 1980s, at respected venues like Makk Galleries in Beverly Hills, Calif., the Roy Miles Gallery in London and the Hollywood Entertainment Museum.

The last of these, a two-month solo exhibition, showcased her Hollywood Legends collection, a series of larger-than-life portraits of 22 film icons. Many were inspired by Ms. Carrera’s personal associations with the actors she worked with over the years, such as: Sean Connery (Never Say Never Again), Bette Davis (Wicked Stepmother), Paul Newman (When Time Ran Out), Sir Lawrence Olivier (Wild Geese), Burt Lancaster and Michael York (The Island of Dr. Moreau) and Peter O’Toole (Masada). Other legends in the series include: Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, Anthony Quinn, James Dean, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Vivien Leigh (as Scarlett O’Hara) and Clark Gable (as Rhett Butler). The oil-on-canvas portraits took Ms. Carrera three years to complete and are sizable (most are 30 x 40 inches). All are available as signed giclees.

When she decided to undertake the Hollywood Legends series, Ms. Carrera was faced with a challenge common to many portrait artists.

“I wanted to capture each subject’s inner beauty as well as their outer charisma,” she said. “In each instance, I strove to capture the soul through the eyes. Greta Garbo was my most resistant subject. She was almost mask-like, with eyes that didn’t reveal anything.”

After putting the portrait aside for a long time, Ms. Carrera finally addressed her recalcitrant subject.

“‘Greta,’ I said, ‘I’m going to paint you whether you like it or not, so you might as well cooperate.’”

Again, using the eyes as the gateway to the soul, Ms. Carrera achieved her goal—capturing the mystery and allure of the great Garbo in a way that made her look alive and enigmatic, not detached and vacant.

Barbara Carrera was born in Managua, Nicaragua, in 1951. Her father was a diplomat working at the American embassy in Managua. Her mother was a young Nicaraguan woman who today lives in Florida. Barbara dropped her father’s name, Kingsbury, in favor of her mother’s maiden name when she embarked on a modeling career at age 17. Over the years, she would grace the covers of more than 300 of the top fashion magazines, including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and others.

Before that, it was her father’s decision to send Barbara to a convent in the United States, at the tender age of 10. For five years she was schooled in Memphis, not to become a nun but for the value of what was seen as a superior education. Art was an interest, but music took up more of her study time.

“I dabbled in watercolors then,” she said, “but I was committed to the piano, so painting was just a lark.”

She left the convent at age 15 with the intention of enrolling at the Sorbonne in Paris, but she never registered for school.

“I resisted wanting to study,” she explained. “Even with art, I was interested in painting and working with oils, but I thought there were rules for mixing the colors so I was afraid of it. I also didn’t want to learn somebody else’s way. I wanted my art to emerge naturally—out of me.”

It was an Indian guru who encouraged Barbara to finally set aside her fears and “just do it.” Her early efforts were raw and mystical.

“I was mixing colors every which way, very indiscriminately,” she said. “Everything had a colorful, illustrative look.”

In addition to portraits, Ms. Carrera also paints landscapes, still life and spiritually-insightful images. She is dedicated to daily meditation and draws inspiration for her art from hours of quiet introspection. Her art embraces the cultural influences, landscapes and people of her life experiences and exotic film locations—from India to Australia, China to Russia, Africa to South America and the United States.

Perhaps her most powerful work is her collection called “Journey: An Odyssey” and is paintings of people she has encountered.

“The images in this series were inspired by my travels around the world and the many beautiful and interesting faces I saw,” Ms. Carrera said. “Some of the faces were etched in my mind, waiting to go on canvas, while others were taken from photographs I saw that made an impression on me. Still others came from my imagination.”

One image was adapted from the haunting photo of the 12-year-old Afghan girl, Sharbat, who graced the cover of National Geographic.

“Collectively, I’ve placed these people from around the world on a journey—an odyssey,” Ms. Carrera said. “In every painting, there’s a pathway that shows the subject coming or going somewhere. Most of the subjects are at the beginning of their journey. For Sharbat, I placed her journey in the dry and rocky mountains of her native Afghanistan—a sharp contrast to her young and beautiful face.

Barbara Carrera has traveled the world over and in the process, mastered five languages. She is one of only a very few top models to successfully transition from the fashion pages to the silver screen. She has received several Golden Globe nominations and awards for her work in film. She is also the only actor to ever receive a Golden Globe nomination for a James Bond film (for Never Say Never Again).

In that movie, opposite Sean Connery, Ms. Carrera earned the title of “the most beautiful Bond girl.” The movie critic Leonard Maltin once described her as “…a feline, olive-skinned and almond-eyed exmodel whose cool dark looks make her ideally suited to play seductive villainesses or exotic damsels.”

To learn more about Barbara Carrera and her artwork or to purchase an original painting or a signed, numbered giclee print, visit www.barbaracarreraart.com. 

Actress and Artist
Barbara Carrera

Lady in Red,
24 x 36 inches.

Clay Basket, Barbara’s character from the mini-series Centennial;
from the Journey: An Odyssey series, 30 x 40 inches.

Barbara Carrera played
the mesmerizing lethal assassin “Fatima Blush” in the 1983 Bond film Never Say Never Again.

Plate, Vase and a Platter
of Pears and Apples.