Lois Chiles

Chiles was born in Houston, the daughter of Marion Clay Chiles and Barbara Wayne Kirkland Chiles. Her paternal uncle was oil tycoon and Texas Rangers owner Eddie Chiles. She had two brothers: Clay Kirkland Chiles (who died in 1979), and William Edmonds Chiles, president and CEO of Bristow Group, Inc. She was raised in Alice, Texas. Chiles studied at the University of Texas at Austin and the former Finch College in New York City, where she was discovered by a Glamour editor looking for a young woman to feature on the cover of the magazine's annual college issue. In her New York years, she befriended Tennessee Williams, Andy Warhol, Maureen Stapleton, and models Patty Hanson and Grace Jones. Chiles moved from New York to Los Angeles around 1978 when she felt she no longer wanted to pursue modeling and focus on acting only. It was also around this time that she lost her younger brother to cancer. Clay Chiles was 25 when he died in 1978 at M.D. Anderson of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, which affected her deeply. She dated Don Henley but the relationship ended, and later for a time, dated William S. Paley. In 2005, she married money manager Richard Gilder. They were both honorary co-chairs of Northfield Mount Hermon, a school in Massachusetts. Gilder donated money to the school and they named the Chiles Theater after her. Gilder died in 2020. ==Career==

Chiles enjoyed a successful modeling career in the early 1970s. After her role in the 1972 blaxploitation film Together for Days opposite Clifton Davis, Chiles appeared in supporting roles in some of the biggest films of the 1970s. She played the college girlfriend of Robert Redford in the successful 1973 studio release The Way We Were. She was then cast as Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby (1974) alongside Mia Farrow and, once again, Redford. She again shared the screen with Farrow in the Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile (1978). She also appeared in a small but key role in the thriller Coma (1978). In her most famous role as NASA astronaut, scientist, and Bond girl Dr. Holly Goodhead, Chiles appeared opposite Roger Moore in Moonraker (1979). Chiles had initially been approached to star in the previous Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, but she declined the role because she was taking a break from acting at the time. In 1989, she appeared uncredited in a cameo as the estranged mother of Ione Skye's character in Say Anything... (1989). In 1985, she appeared as "Maggie" in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in Los Angeles opposite Terence Knox and directed by Jose Ferrer. She stated that it was a major personal triumph to play the demanding role for her as she was not stage-trained. She has since appeared as a stuffy high-school principal in the 1996 Disney film Wish Upon a Star, and as a frightened cruise passenger in the critically panned Speed 2: Cruise Control in 1997. She made a cameo appearance in the international release of the 1997 Bond spoof Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, though her scene was cut from the United States release. Other episodic television work included guest appearances in series such as Hart to Hart (as a psychotic split-personality model), In the Heat of the Night, Murder, She Wrote, and The Nanny. Later career high points included the indie films Diary of a Hitman (1991) and Curdled (1996). Unlike some "Bond girls", Chiles has said that "being a Bond girl is a fun way to be remembered", although she jokes that being asked to sigh "Oh, James" is annoying because "you can't live up to people's fantasies". On other occasions, she stated "I'm proud I'm a Bond Girl. It's not bad at all." Mostly retired from film, she has spent her later years focusing on art and dividing her time between Houston and New York. ==Filmography==