Why did George Lazenby quit as James Bond?
After Sean Connery had transformed James Bond into an icon of cinema by headlining the first five James Bond movies, his decision to vacate the role was largely driven by his fear of being typecast. The downside was that he left behind some very big shoes to fill, with insurmountable pressure being placed on his successor.
The audition process saw hundreds of performers step forward to state their case, with Timothy Dalton turning down the part he would eventually play two decades later because he deemed himself too young and unwilling to try and emulate Connery before On Her Majesty’s Secret Service threw everyone for a loop by hiring a complete unknown.
Any actor would have faced a tough time trying to put their own stamp on a character that had been so inextricably linked to Connery for so long, never mind somebody who was making their feature film debut. Lazenby certainly looked the part and pulled off the tux immaculately, but questions were immediately raised over whether or not he had the acting chops to pull it off.
To this day, that remains entirely up for debate. Christopher Nolan lauds On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as his favourite Bond flick ever, and it’s undergone something of a reappraisal in the decades since it first released to a muted reception. However, Lazenby’s acting is often stilted, forced, and lacking in the innate charisma that made Connery so memorable, not that it mattered much when the former dropped out to be immediately replaced by his predecessor when the grizzled Scotsman stepped back into the breach for follow-up Diamonds Are Forever.
One of the film’s most famous lines of dialogue finds Lazenby’s Bond basically winking towards the audience and saying, “This never happened to the other fellow,” and that statement also applies to his departure. Whereas Connery walked away of his own accord before being convinced to make a comeback, Lazenby maintains that his agent convinced him to reject a six-film contract.
The star believes turning down one of the industry’s most prominent recurring roles and walking away from it entirely did irreparable damage to his career, and it’s easy to believe considering that his filmography over the following decades never afforded him another opportunity anywhere near as high-profile as Bond.
Producer Albert Broccoli suggested his difficult nature had a lot to do with it, describing Lazenby as someone who was both “so arrogant” and unable to “get along with the other performers and technicians”. However, the man himself refuted those claims in an interview with The Guardian, maintaining that his desire to spread his wings elsewhere was the deciding factor.
“Word got around that I was difficult to handle,” he admitted. “They said that was the reason I didn’t do another Bond, but that wasn’t the truth.” The bad advice given to him by his agent, who informed him “James Bond was over anyway” because it was “Sean Connery’s gig” was something Lazenby confessed he “bought into”, but it turned out the grass was hardly greener on the other side.
