of years since violence existed, so that Barbarella was very clumsy all through the picture. She shoots herself in the foot and everything. It was pretty ludicrous. The stuff with Claude Dauphin and the suicide room were also part of my contribution to the film." Pre-production and casting Several actresses were approached before Jane Fonda was cast as Barbarella: Brigitte Bardot, who was not interested in a sexualized role, and Sophia Loren, who was pregnant and felt that she would not fit the role. Fonda was uncertain about the film, but Vadim convinced her by saying that science fiction was a rapidly-evolving genre. Before filming Barbarella, she was the subject of two sex scandals: the first when her nude body was displayed across an eight-story billboard promoting the premiere of Circle of Love in 1965, and the second when several candid nude photos from Vadim's closed set for The Game Is Over were sold to Playboy the following year. According to biographer Thomas Kiernan, the billboard incident made her a sex symbol in the United States. Vadim said he did not want the actress to play Barbarella "tongue in cheek", and he saw the character as "just a lovely, average girl with a terrific space record and a lovely body. I am not going to intellectualise her. Although there is going to be a bit of satire about our morals and our ethics, the picture is going to be more of a spectacle than a cerebral exercise for a few way-out intellectuals." Fonda felt her priority for Barbarella was to "keep her innocent"; the character "is not a vamp and her sexuality is not measured by the rules of our society. She is not being promiscuous but she follows the natural reaction of another type of upbringing. She is not a so-called 'sexually liberated woman' either. That would mean rebellion against something. She is different. She was born free". Fonda personally recommended John Phillip Law as Pygar to Vadim following their work on Hurry Sundown; for the duration of his stay in Rome, the actor lived with Fonda, Vadim and Forest in their rented villa on Appian Way. Law, an avid comic book reader since childhood, read the Forest comics and studied the DC Comics character Hawkman for inspiration. The delayed pre-production of Barbarella allowed Law to film two roles before committing to the film: as Bill Meceita in the