Who will be the next James Bond? Eight candidates for 007 after No Time to Die
- Helen Barlow considers the chances of the actors mentioned as potential successors to Daniel Craig, considered the best incarnation of 007 since Sean Connery
- James Norton, who tells her he likes to explore ‘the inner conflict’ of his characters, and Outlander’s Sam Heughan, a Scot, are the current favourites
The announcement of which actor will next play James Bond is still some way off, but that hasn’t stopped the speculation about who it will be. Daniel Craig leaves big shoes to fill after his fifth and final turn as the British special agent in No Time to Die.
Whether the lucky actor will be well known or a surprise pick, as Craig was, remains to be seen. Age is another factor, given that actors can spend a decade playing 007.
As we wait for news, it is interesting to cast our minds back to a time when the film series was in the doldrums – before Pierce Brosnan came along it had been failing, propelled downwards by Timothy Dalton’s License to Kill (1989), the least successful of all the 007 films.
After a six-year break, Brosnan, an Irish actor with a sense of caddish fun, would make the role his own in GoldenEye (1995). He brought charm, a sense of style and a knowing wink to the four Bond films in which he starred, and without the silliness of the Roger Moore oeuvre that saw 007 ward off evil spirits and venture into outer space.
Though Moore played the character seven times, he could never take it as seriously as the great Sean Connery, a former gymnast, had done in his seven outings as Bond. “Sean, physically, is a much tougher individual than I am,” Moore once said. “It’s easier to accept him as a killer than me.”
