It didn't help that the animal was on set while they rehearse the beach scene where Jane and Tarzan first meet, and Derek watched as she pretended to be in danger. "He and Tarzan were buddies, no problem," she says. "ĭerek's concerns went unheeded, especially after O'Keefe bonded with the more aggressive cub. You're going to love him.' And I said, 'I don't like the way he looks at me.' You have the feeling on your neck that you are prey - and that's how he looked at me. They said, 'Oh, he's fresh from a Texas zoo, but he's so cute. "I saw this beautiful, young, spectacular male lion and he's just fixated on me," recalls Derek. Miles O'Keeffe and Bo Derek as Tarzan and Jane in Tarzan, the Ape Man from 1981 (Photo: MGM / courtesy Everett Collection)
But when she got to the set in Sri Lanka, she found that the crew - led by her husband and the film's director, John Derek - had hired a new employee. To star and produce the film - which was a remake of the 1932 blockbuster that spawned an entire Tarzan franchise - she had picked another animal co-star, an older, more experienced big cat who had starred in many Hollywood productions. (Check out our video interview above.)Įven before the attack, Derek had a premonition that this particular lion might cause trouble. Only last minute intervention by Tarzan himself (played by Miles O'Keefe) prevented the disaster. The film, which hit theaters 40 years ago this month, features a scene in which Derek's Jane is attacked by a lion while bathing on a tropical beach.īut, as the actress and international sex symbol tells Yahoo Entertainment, her co-star seriously deviated from the script during the shoot, trying to really tear her apart.
But real life and role life collided dangerously on the set of Tarzan, the 1981 Monkey Man, in which Bo Derek starred as the better half of the Jungle King. As Tarzan's long-time companion, Jane Porter is no stranger to dangerous animal encounters on the pages of Edgar Rice Burrough's popular novels or her many film adaptations.