The “creepy” moment that made Roger Moore quit James Bond: “It becomes disgusting”
There comes a time in every James Bond actor’s life when they realise they’re no longer cut out for playing cinema’s most iconic secret agent, something that Roger Moore discovered too late.
Sometimes they gracefully step aside, sometimes they’re pushed towards the exit, and occasionally, it’s a combination of the two. People had already been saying for years that Moore was too long in the tooth to continue shouldering the franchise, but he was one of the last to cotton on.
Sean Connery was 41 when Diamonds Are Forever was released, and he quit because he grew bored with the character and didn’t want to be permanently typecast, although he was 53 when the unofficial Never Say Never Again hit cinemas. George Lazenby was 30 in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and he had no intention of hanging around for any longer.
Timothy Dalton was 43 when he bid farewell to Bond in Licence to Kill, with legal red tape robbing him of the third movie he was contracted to make. Pierce Brosnan was 49 in Die Another Day, and he could have been the second 50-something to play 007 in an official instalment before he was unceremoniously ditched against his will.
That honour instead fell to Daniel Craig, who’d turned 53 by the time No Time to Die finally rolled out after being hit with repeated creative reshuffled and several lengthy delays. Unless something drastic changes, Moore will probably always be known as the oldest-ever Bond, with the actor’s seventh and final outing in A View to a Kill releasing when he was 57.
He wasn’t that much older than Craig, but whereas he was nothing less than convincing, Moore had been creaking for a while. Several attempts had been made to replace him over the years, with James Brolin convinced he’d be taking over, but he hung around out of necessity more than anything else.
For his last couple of films, criticism had been levelled towards Moore for being increasingly out of place as a weathered, ageing, and lethargic 007, who clearly didn’t have enough gas in the tank to perform stunts or fight sequences with any degree of energy, with doubles doing most of the heavy lifting.
Eventually, he realised it too, especially when the image of the spy as a lothario began to turn sour. “Physically, I was OK,” he remarked. “But, facially, I started looking… Well, the leading ladies were young enough to be my granddaughter, and it becomes disgusting.”
To illustrate that point, Moore’s love interest in A View to a Kill was Tanya Roberts’ Stacey Sutton, who was 35 at the time of its release. The 22-year age gap between the onscreen paramours was bad enough, but when the leading man discovered he was older than Roberts’ mother, he knew it was time to get off the horse.
In an interview with The Mirror, Moore confessed that his Bond couldn’t be seen “hanging around with women in their early 20s without it appearing creepy,” which convinced him it was time to hang up the Walther PPK and the shaken-not-stirred martini for good. If anything, he hung around for at least two movies too many, but he saw sense eventually.
