The James Bond scene every actor since Sean Connery has auditioned with: “It’s awful”
As the first actor to ever play James Bond in a movie, Sean Connery had it easier than any of his successors because there was nobody else to compare him to.
All he had to work with was Ian Fleming’s source material and the bizarre live television production that aired in 1954, where Barry Nelson played an Americanised version of the distinctly British spy. He was free to put his own stamp on the character, and that’s exactly what he did.
For many, Connery remains the definitive interpretation of 007, even if everyone else to follow in his footsteps has put their own spin on it. Well, possibly with the exception of George Lazenby, who was out of his depth stepping into such daunting shoes and then effectively torpedoed his entire career by vacating the role as the only one-and-done Bond ever.
Roger Moore’s eyebrow-raising antics dragged the franchise perilously close to self-parody, Timothy Dalton took MI6’s finest in a darker direction that was too ahead of its time for its own good, Pierce Brosnan sought to balance the charm of Connery with the camp of Moore before Daniel Craig brought a more rough, ready, and grounded edge to the international super-spy.
However, one thing they all have in common is that they found it impossible to escape from Connery’s looming shadow because every single one of them – never mind the countless actors who staked their claim to become the next Bond before flunking their screen tests – auditioned using one of their predecessor’s signature scenes from his sophomore outing, From Russia with Love.
Bond aficionados know the scene where a towel-draped 007 emerges from a hotel bathroom brandishing his trusty Walther PPK inside out, where he walks into the room to discover Daniela Bianchi’s Tatiana Romanova lurking under the sheets. Stripping down and getting frisky isn’t the most obvious way to audition a potential Bond, and Craig was determined to ensure that nobody ever gets to see the footage of his attempt.
“It’s a tradition, apparently,” he told Empire of using From Russia with Love‘s boudoir encounter as the measuring stick for all potential Bonds. “Why? I’ve never got it out of Barbara [Brocolli] yet. Oh god, if she hasn’t destroyed that piece of film yet, I hope she will. It’s awful. I don’t want anybody to ever see it. My eyes were just swimming.”
From Russia with Love first hit cinemas in 1963, Connery never played Bond in an official production after 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, and his final stint as the secret agent came in 1983’s unlicensed Never Say Never Again. And yet, despite the number of movies to have been made since and the constant casting changes, he’s still the guy everybody else has to emulate when Eon drafts them in for an audition.
