How many times has James Bond died?
Has any movie character escaped the icy hand of death more times than James Bond? The seminal super spy’s ability to survive any deathtrap, no matter how elaborate, has long been a signature of the character, and over the years, audiences have delighted in watching the ridiculous ways he has managed to escape a seemingly certain date with destiny.
However, even though it may have seemed like it every time he used his ingenuity and high-tech gadgets to live to fight another day, Bond has never been immortal. He is, at the end of the day, a flesh-and-blood man fuelled by duty, libido, and shaken-not-stirred martinis, and therefore he can be killed just like anyone else. It all brings an intriguing question to mind: how many times has Bond actually died on-screen?
Fascinatingly, Bond would have perished years and years ago if the first man who played him had his way. Sean Connery always had a complicated relationship with Bond, the role that made him famous and would define him until his dying day. In fact, he once bitterly mused – not unlike many of Bond’s flamboyant villains bent on world domination – “I have always hated that damned James Bond. I’d like to kill him.”
Naturally, Connery was never allowed to kill off the moneymaking character he loved and hated at the same time. Ironically, though, the year after Connery died, his fictional counterpart also met his demise on-screen for the one and only official time. When Daniel Craig’s Bond found himself standing on the secret island headquarters of villain Safin at the end of 2021’s No Time To Die, looking up at the sky for the missiles about to blow him to kingdom come, he appeared at peace with his death. It certainly shocked audiences, but also seemed like a fitting end to Craig’s five-movie run as Bond.
How many times has James Bond faked his own death?
Having said that, even though Bond has only died once on-screen in an official fashion, the movie series has long toyed with the idea of the iconic superspy biting the big one. In fact, Bond has faked his own death once, on top of being presumed dead. He has also been depicted dying before it was all revealed to be a fakeout designed to give audiences a giddy little thrill.
The first time Bond supposedly “died” came in the opening scenes of From Russia With Love, the second instalment in the storied franchise. Audiences eager for another Bond adventure watched as Sean Connery’s debonair secret agent hunted the villainous Red Grant through a hedge maze, which shockingly ended with Grant strangling ‘Bond’ to death with a garrote. However, it was quickly revealed that this was all a SPECTRE training programme when Grant removed the fallen man’s extremely lifelike Bond mask. How very Mission: Impossible of you, Bond!
Four years later, in You Only Live Twice, Bond was caught with his pants down after making love to yet another beautiful woman, who immediately betrayed him. The bed they were lying on sprang up into the wall, with Bond trapped inside, and the wall was blasted by machine guns. How could Bond survive that one? Well, initially, it seemed very much like he didn’t: he was granted a front-page obituary as a British Naval Commander and was buried at sea. Have no fear, though, because it was all revealed as a cunning plan from MI6 to take Bond off the board, as it were, allowing him to begin a secret investigation into space capsules that had mysteriously vanished.
Over the next 45 years, Bond came close to death countless times, whether he was almost burned to a crisp in a cremation oven, attacked by crocodiles, or poisoned so badly that it induced a cardiac arrest. However, none of those trifling occurrences could keep a good spy down, and the next time it seemed as if he had died, Bond had taken on the grizzled form of Daniel Craig.
In 2012’s Skyfall, Bond was tangling with a bad guy on the roof of a speeding train, which sounds like a regular ol’ Tuesday for someone like him. Matters were complicated when M ordered Moneypenny to shoot the bad guy with her rifle, but she missed and hit Bond instead, sending him plunging off the roof of the train to the rapid waters of the river below. MI6 listed him as “missing and presumed dead,” but it turned out he survived and contemplated quitting the spy world for good as he recovered from his wounds. Naturally, this wasn’t the choice he made, and he soon returned to battle Javier Bardem’s terrifying villain Silva.
