A little too long in the tooth: the gigantic role Cary Grant turned down
One of the most iconic actors of Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’, Cary Grant exuded a timeless star power and natural charisma that made him one of the industry’s most in-demand A-listers for decades.
Evolving from a fixture of the screwball circuit to a leading man in dramas and thrillers, there wasn’t much he couldn’t do. He was handsome and charming, carried himself with the air of somebody who knew they were a big deal, and had the requisite dramatic chops to establish himself as both a media darling and a respected thespian.
Grant’s filmography is packed full of favourites from Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, and The Philadelphia Story through to his Alfred Hitchcock era in Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief, and North by Northwest, via his Academy Award-nominated turns in Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart.
He was six feet tall, ruggedly good-looking, looked suave in a tuxedo, and had showcased himself to be a man of both action and romance on-screen. All that and he was born in Bristol, so it was only natural that he’d been selected as the ideal candidate to play Ian Fleming’s literary creation in the first-ever James Bond movie.
Grant was the best man at Cubby Broccoli’s wedding to Dana Natol in 1959, which the producer saw as the perfect opportunity to gauge his interest in playing the debonair secret agent. There was definitely interest on his part, but whereas the offer was on the table for a five-picture contract to embody Bond, Grant was only interested in doing it once.
That was fair enough, considering he was in his late 50s at the time Dr. No first entered development, but it could have dramatically altered the franchise’s trajectory had Broccoli acquiesced. After all, every actor to have ever played 007 has signed on for multiple films, with George Lazenby the only one who backed out after a solitary outing as MI6’s finest operative.
If Grant has agreed to launch the globetrotting spy saga and then step away, it’s entirely up for debate if audiences would accept the role being recast so soon. Roger Moore came under a lot of criticism for playing a Bond who was pushing 60 by the end of his tenure, but that’s how old Grant was when he was initially offered the gig in the first place.
Instead, the casting search began anew and ultimately settled on a relatively unknown Scotsman named Sean Connery, who was 26 years Grant’s junior. He was happy to sign on the dotted line for multiple Bond adventures, and even though it’s one of the biggest cliches in the big book of cliches, there’s a reason why they say the rest is history.
