In the early 1980s, Caroline “Tula” Cossey was living the dream of every aspiring model. She was cast to play a Bond girl in the film For Your Eyes Only alongside Roger Moore. To accompany the film’s release, she appeared in a spread forPlayboy, featuring her and other Bond girls from the film.

Then, just as the Bond movie came out, a tabloid called News of the World outed Cossey against her will in a headline that read “James Bond Girl Was a Boy.” The tabloid’s headline sparked a media firestorm and Cossey was thrust into the spotlight as a trailblazer. She instantly became a role model for trans women. Since then, Cossey carried on with her acting and modeling, making it into the pages of Playboy once again in 1991 as well as penning two autobiographies.

In a new interview with Playboy about her groundbreaking career, Cossey, 60, (who now lives in suburban Atlanta with her second husband) said she was born as Barry Cossey and spent much of her life knowing that she was a woman. She completed gender-reassignment surgery in 1974 after years of other surgeries and treatments. In the 70s and 80s, she pursued her dream of modeling, appearing inHarper’s Bazaar and Australian Vogue. She also found fame as a “Page Three Girl,” a model in the pages of British paper The Sun.