James Bond Appearances
I'm not telling you anything you don't already know when I list the actors who've played James Bond. Moreso than almost any other fictional character (with the possibly exception of Doctor Who), this is an incredibly well known piece of film trivia. Rather than just list these dudes, I'll try to iadd a little fun info about WHEN they played the part, and how their casting was the product of their time
There's a reason the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, wasn't originally adapted into the Eon films. In 1954, only a year after it's publication, with only one book in existance and LONG before James Bond ever made it to the big screen, the first book was adapted into a television movie by CBS. An American production, James was rewritten as 'Jimmy Bond' and played by American actor Barry Nelson. This is a hard thing to find, but I actually really like it... Nelson has a certain 50's era cool that is totally different but still likeable. This production would tie up the rights to this particular story for a long time and lead to one of the weirdest Bond movies out there, which we'll get to.
Getting into the actual Eon films, we start with Sean Connery. He starring in the first bond movie, Dr. No, in 1962 (at the ripe old age of 32, but people just looked older then). He went on to appear in five more movies in only five years, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Octopussy, and You Only Live Twice, all of them direct adaptations of the original novels and establishing all the tropes that would go on to define the character. The series attempted a reboot in 1969 with a new actor (which we'll get to) but quickly course corrected BACK to Sean Connery for 1971's Diamonds Are Forever.
Connery essentially retired from the character after this, but did crop up one more time in a non-Eon film, 1983's Never Say Never Again. The name is actually a play on something he said back when he 'retired' but the movie itself is a retelling of Thunderball, made possible because of a long legal battle between Fleming's estate and Kevin McClory, who was evidentally a co-writer on the original story. Comically, this movie featured an aging, retired bond coming out of retirement, but at 52 Connery was 3 years YOUNGER then current bond Roger Moore.
Connery essentially retired from the character after this, but did crop up one more time in a non-Eon film, 1983's Never Say Never Again. The name is actually a play on something he said back when he 'retired' but the movie itself is a retelling of Thunderball, made possible because of a long legal battle between Fleming's estate and Kevin McClory, who was evidentally a co-writer on the original story. Comically, this movie featured an aging, retired bond coming out of retirement, but at 52 Connery was 3 years YOUNGER then current bond Roger Moore.
Right in the middle of Connery's run on the character, the weird legal status of the first book thanks to that old CBS TV movie came back and really bit them. When a producer got his hands on the rights and couldnt come to terms with Eon Films, he went ahead and made his own movie as a satire of the franchise. The result is the non-cannon Casino Royale, an ensemble comedy featuring Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Terrence Cooper, Ursula Andress, Debroah Kerr... even Orson freaking Wells. David Niven playes the original James Bond... but I can't really say if he's any good, because I've never made it through this movie. It's very bad.
After the five original Eon movies, the series attempted a new direction with a new actor. While I'm sure the pricetag to keep bringing in Connery was part of the equasion, I believe another influence was the success of other film series in the spy genre that was spinning out of the popularity of James Bond, most noteably the Harry Palmer movies starring Michael Caine. While the Connery films had become more and more outlandish with wackier plots and more absurd gagets, 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service was a much more grounded story with more plausible spygear. George Lazenby, a former model (just like Connery), was 29 when he took on the role, making him the youngest actor to ever play him. He wasn't bad, and if the part wasn't so inextricably tied to Connery, he might have done pretty well. As it was, he was out after one movie, and Connery was back for one more movie before Eon reset the series again.
Eon's second reset was a hard yank of the wheel in the other direction. With their first attempted reboot, they tried to go more grounded and real-world. When that didn't work, They instead delivered the 1973's weird-as-balls Live and Let Die, with long-time television star of shows like The Saint, Maverick & The Persuaders, Roger Moore. He came INTO the series at 46 years old, and played the part of James Bond for a full twelve years and seven movies, making him the most prolific Bond actor. These movies are where the series just gets weird as hell. 1979's Moonraker jumped unapologetically onto the Star Wars bandwagon, featuring lazer battles in space. By 1985's A View to a Kill, Roger Moore was 58, wooing a 29-year-old Tanya Roberts.
By the mid-eighties the series had officially run out of original novels to adapt, and needed to start adapting the short stories. Also, the world of action movies had shifted drastically, so the next James Bond was a huge shift from the almost cartoonish Roger Moore. Timothy Dalton took over the role in 1987's The Living Daylights at a lean 41, and immediately retooled the character to more closely fit the coldblooded murderer of the original novels. This take more easily fit into the model of the new movies, designed to feel more like 80's-era action movies with a level of brutality that felt right at home sharing the cineplex the Segals and Stallones of the time. Also, it bears noting that these movies feature a rarely recognized shift in James relationship to the women in the film, as they actually get to sucessfully REJECT his advances.
Officially out of adaptable material, 1995's Goldeneye is the first completely original new Bond movie, and featured an actor that had actually been courted to play the role back in the 80's but couldnt thanks to his contract with televisions Remmington Steele: Pierce Brosnan. 42 when he started, Pierce had the benefit of working with material specifically designed to emulate the style and substance of the character rather than serving original stories, and was essentially free to draw from all the past takes on the character and create a sort of amalgam performance that lots of people consider one of the best Bonds yet.
Finally, we come to the reason we're here, the most recent and by far most financially successful take on James Bond; Daniel Craig. This new spin on the character was a measured reaction to modern action films, deliberatly structured to emulate modern spy thrillers like the hugely sucessful Jason Bourne series, while starting with a return to form by finally adapting the original book, Casino Royale in 2006. Craig's take on the character is regularly referred to as a 'blunt instrument'... we're meant to be seeing his formative years as a visciously brutal assassin slowly morphing into a gentleman spy. It definitely works, and largely because Craig is a WAY better actor than anyone gives him credit for.
He's appearing in his fifth and final Bond film in 2020, No Time To Die, and while both Roger Moore and Sean Connery appeared in more films, no one else has logged in as much time; a titanic fourteen years as the character, all in modern stunt-heavy productions that have put the now 52-year-old actor's body through a literal meatgrinder. You can fanboy about the old films all you want, but no one else has quite so sucessfully presented the broken nightmare of a person Bond would actually be, and for that he's my personal favorite.
He's appearing in his fifth and final Bond film in 2020, No Time To Die, and while both Roger Moore and Sean Connery appeared in more films, no one else has logged in as much time; a titanic fourteen years as the character, all in modern stunt-heavy productions that have put the now 52-year-old actor's body through a literal meatgrinder. You can fanboy about the old films all you want, but no one else has quite so sucessfully presented the broken nightmare of a person Bond would actually be, and for that he's my personal favorite.