The actor who “underestimated the role” of James Bond, according to Sean Connery
As one of the most coveted roles in cinema, there’s a huge amount of pressure and expectation that comes with playing James Bond. Being the originator of cinema’s most famous secret agent, Sean Connery knows what it takes to succeed.
In fairness, of all the actors to have played 007 in the franchise’s long and illustrious history, the only one who definitely proved themselves as being not up to the task was George Lazenby. He’s got the solitary one-and-done record, and Connery even called him a “prize shit” for the way he handled his tenure.
Roger Moore became increasingly hit-or-miss the longer he stayed in the tux. Timothy Dalton was the right man at the wrong time. Pierce Brosnan merged the debonair air Connery carried with the tongue-in-cheek campness of his successor. Then, Daniel Craig dragged Bond kicking and screaming into modernity by making him more grounded, vulnerable, and ruthless than ever.
As for Lazenby? He was there in body but perhaps not in spirit, even if On Her Majesty’s Secret Service has gained a reputation for being something of an underappreciated gem in Bondian canon. Christopher Nolan is among its staunchest defenders and he’s about the most famous fanboy of the series there is, so it can’t have been a total washout.
The most obvious bonus of first embodying a character who subsequently gets placed through the revolving door of recasting is that there is nobody else to be compared to, which gave Connery free rein to mould Bond in his own image. However, the spy is so iconic that it’s hard to do something drastic or unique without running the risk of alienating a huge part of the core audience, making it increasingly difficult for each current 007 to rock the boat.
In Connery’s mind, one of the people to follow in his footsteps couldn’t quite reconcile their background with the traits inherent to make MI6’s deadliest operative work best, which saw their tenure go down as a miss in the eyes of the guy who got the ball rolling in the first place.
“Timothy Dalton has Shakespearean training, but he underestimated the role,” Connery mused to Entertainment Weekly. “The character has to be graceful and move well, and have a certain measure of charm as well as be dangerous.”
It’s a little harsh, especially when Dalton’s tenure is heralded as one of Bond’s more underrated eras. He arguably had the hardest job of anyone in trying to steer his movies as far away from the high camp of late-stage Moore as possible, which unfortunately coincided with some of the lowest ticket sales across the saga’s 25-film history. Connery wasn’t convinced, anyway, but that’s not to say there aren’t a number of Dalton diehards willing to die on the hill that he was the best of all.
