007’s everyday enemies: five James Bond villains based on real people
It might be a franchise that’s detached from reality even at its most realistic, but the James Bond series has plucked its inspirations and nomenclature from real life since the very beginning.
Ian Fleming got the name of the suave superspy from a birdwatching book, while he spent plenty of time at the Goldeneye estate in Jamaica when he was penning the books that would spawn one of cinema’s most iconic and longest-running properties.
007 himself was cobbled together from several disparate parts that included Christopher Lee, so it was entirely in keeping with the literary saga for Fleming to look to his own life when he was developing the rogues’ gallery.
Of course, screenwriters have since taken up that baton and run with it, leaving Bond with a number of adversaries who originated in a world much more grounded than the one he’s always inhabited.
James Bond villains based on real people:
5. Franz Sanchez (Licence to Kill, John Glen, 1989)
Timothy Dalton will always be remembered as the right Bond at the wrong time, with his grounded and grittier take on the secret agent coinciding with a pair of the franchise’s least commercially successful movies.
Evil drug lords were a staple of the action genre throughout the 1980s, with Robert Davi’s Franz Sanchez following that template to a tee. While there’s a definite air of Pablo Escobar to the drug-running ruthless drug lord, the most pronounced influence is that of Manuel Noriega.
A military dictator who amassed a vast personal fortune during his time as the country’s iron fist between 1983 and 1989, there’s no way it’s a coincidence that 007 came up against a very similar antagonist during Noriega’s oppressive regime.
4. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun, Guy Hamilton, 1974)
It might not trouble the rankings of Bond’s best-ever adventures, but Christopher Lee makes a suitably formidable opponent for the intrepid MI6 operative in The Man with the Golden Gun.
Based on Fleming’s novel of the same name, the author certainly knew how to hold a grudge, with Francisco Scaramanga getting his surname – and tall, slender frame – from somebody the writer knew very well.
That’s one story, anyway, but the Flemings and Scaramangas were enemies nonetheless. There was a George Scaramanga who purportedly bullied the young Fleming during their Eton days, while there was allegedly a Peter Scaramanga who inflicted much the same ordeal upon the Bond creator’s nephew. Either way, the name was so unusual that it was no surprise it came right from past experience.
3. Elliot Carver (Tomorrow Never Dies, Roger Spottiswoode, 1997)
It wasn’t rapturously received at the time, but as more time passes, it’s beginning to look as though Tomorrow Never Dies could well be remembered as the most prophetic Bond film of all.
A wealthy tycoon manipulating the media and using misinformation to power their own agenda was the stuff of fantastical blockbusters in the late 1990s, but it’s an everyday occurrence in the modern age where fact-checking and research has become less of a concern than ever.
Take a dash of Rupert Murdoch, sprinkle in some Ian Robert Maxwell, and garnish the whole thing with a soupcon of William Randolph Hearst, and the recipe creates Jonathan Pryce’s bespectacled tyrant Elliot Carver.
2. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger, Guy Hamilton, 1964)
Bond and Austin Powers both came up against a villain with a fondness for gold, but only one of them was threatened with legal action by their real-life counterpart.
Architect Ernõ Goldfinger built his house next door to Fleming, who couldn’t stand the building, which he deemed to be an eyesore. In retaliation, he named one of 007’s most unforgettable enemies after him, after which the real Goldfinger brandished the dagger of litigation.
Ever the wordsmith, Fleming suggested he could change the character’s name to Goldprick instead, before the warring neighbours eventually settled their disagreements out of court.
1. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia with Love, Terence Young, 1963)
The most iconic villain Bond has ever come up against, Blofeld, has been played by everyone from Donald Pleasance and Telly Savalas to Max von Sydow and Christoph Waltz, but the big bad was an amalgamation of several different figures.
Greek arms dealer Basil Zaharoff was one of them, with the merchant of illicit firearms known for swanning around the continent to peddle his wares while retaining a sense of mystery laced with inherent danger.
The name has decidedly less villainous origins, though, with cricket commentator Henry Blofeld telling the BBC how “Ian took my father’s name as the name of the baddie” after he’d been a schoolmate of his old man Thomas.
