“I realised there was so much wrong”: five actors who hated being in James Bond movies
It’s been one of the biggest brands in Hollywood for more than 60 years, but starring in a James Bond movie isn’t guaranteed to be sunshine and roses from beginning to end.
Daniel Craig may have walked back his initial statement after saying he’d rather experience serious harm than make another one, mostly because he was paid an awful lot of money to make another one. However, he’s far from the first dissatisfied customer.
Whether it’s playing underwritten characters, getting little to do as the token love interest, or generally having a terrible time for any number of reasons, landing a plum gig in a 007 adventure isn’t always the glorious opportunity it’s perceived to be.
It has been in many instances, but not as it applied to the following five Bond alumni, who all had their own reasons for holding their respective appearances in such low regard.
Five actors who hated being in James Bond movies:
5. Gemma Arterton
Gemma Arterton’s relationship with the Bond franchise is a complicated one, with the passage of time the deciding factor in souring the actor’s feelings about starring opposite Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace.
She was initially enthusiastic at the prospect of playing a character who was a throwback in name only, with Arterton describing Strawberry Fields as “the thinking man’s crumpet” who was “straight-laced but with a real naughty edge to her.”
However, looking back on her contributions to the film years later, Arterton “realised there was so much wrong with Bond women” in general, wishing instead that her character “should have just said no, really, and worn flat shoes.” In the end, she was a one-dimensional fling for 007, and it didn’t sit well with her in the long term.
4. Jesper Christensen
Playing a secondary henchman in an action movie is one of cinema’s most thankless tasks, so it’s no surprise Jesper Christensen felt so bitter after doing it three times in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Spectre.
He was essentially an exposition machine there to intone ominous warnings to Craig’s suave secret agent, which hardly gave him much room to manoeuvre as a performer. In an almost celebratory fashion, he declared following Spectre that his “interlude as a villain in the James Bond series is over.”
As for the films themselves? Well, Christensen would distil his first two appearances as “really shit,” so he obviously wasn’t enthralled by getting to be a part of a pop culture behemoth on multiple occasions.
3. Yaphet Kotto
Prolific film and television actor Yaphet Kotto didn’t just hate being part of a James Bond movie; he also didn’t have any time for the people who wrote or starred in them either.
Roger Moore’s Live and Let Die doesn’t hold up very well through a modern lens, but Kotto was hardly established enough as an actor to argue with the script or the leading man. Screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz was blasted for “the sea of stereotype crap” he’d written, which “had nothing to do with the Black experience or culture.”
He did at least get a memorable death, but that doesn’t gloss over his misery. When asked decades later to reflect on sharing the screen with the actor playing Bond, his response of “I have nothing to say about Roger Moore” pretty much tells the story.
2. Teri Hatcher
There were disagreements aplenty between Pierce Brosnan and Teri Hatcher while shooting Tomorrow Never Dies, but they were quickly glossed over. Her issues with the character she played, however, were not.
Brosnan admitted that he may have launched a few verbal barbs in his co-star’s direction due to her habit of showing up late to set, but he quickly put those bugbears to the side when it transpired Hatcher was pregnant and suffering from morning sickness.
As for the actor, playing Bond’s ex and villain Elliot Carver’s trophy wife killed two thankless birds with one stone, and Hatcher found her Paris “such an artificial character to be playing” that didn’t give her any sort of “special satisfaction” whatsoever as a performer.
1. Sean Connery
Money always talks the loudest at the end of the day, which is the principal reason why Sean Connery ended his self-imposed exile as Bond to return in the high-paying unofficial entry Never Say Never Again.
His initial umbrage came from the way the character ended up overshadowing his entire career, with 007 always the first word on anybody’s lips whenever they spoke to Connery about anything. There was also the additional danger of typecasting, which convinced him his future lay elsewhere.
The Scotsman famously said he’d “always hated that damned James Bond” and would even kill the fictional character if he had the chance. He owed his livelihood to the part, but these things often tend to come at a cost.
