Dalton: ‘Bond Seemed Like A Ridiculous Notion’

Timothy Dalton has revealed that taking on the role of Britain’s most famous spy “seemed like a ridiculous notion” when he was first offered the part.

Dalton had been in contention to play James Bond following Sean Connery’s departure from the franchise, but turned it down because he thought it was “idiotic” to take over from the celebrated 007 actor.

“I was very flattered that someone should even think that I should, but I don’t know, I was in my early 20s, I think, and… hey, look, on an intelligent level, it just seemed idiotic to take over from Sean Connery,” he told The A.V. Club.

[Pierce Brosnan: 'My Bond was never good enough']

“I mean, if I was perfect for it, if I thought I’d be brilliant in it, if I’d loved the idea of taking over, I would’ve still said ‘no’. It is idiotic to take over from Sean Connery at the time when those movies were… I can remember as a kid going to see them. Not a child, but I was a teenager. I mean, you can’t take over for Sean Connery in that series at its height!

“After Dr. No, after From Russia With Love, after ‘Goldfinger’… I don’t know how many more he did, but to me, those were always the three great ones. You don’t take over. So of course I said no.”

Dalton eventually accepted the iconic part and went on to star in ‘The Living Daylights’ (1987) and ‘License To Kill’ (1989) following Roger Moore’s 12 year tenure in the role.

“There’d been Connery, there’d been [George] Lazenby, there’d been Roger Moore. I think now everybody was now used to the idea that this series was gonna last. No one was trying to cheaply exploit the success, which is a path that’s doomed to failure,” Dalton explained.

“This was a series where the producers were honestly trying to make each one better than the one before, a series that the producers took pride in and wanted to maintain… They took pride in it and were trying to make good. So that’s a plus. And now that three people had already played it and I was lots older — I must’ve been 10, 12, 15 years older — I thought it was worth a shot.”

[Bond girls: Then and now]

The actor, who’s currently starring in horror series ‘Penny Dreadful’, was swayed by producer Albert R. Broccoli’s desire for Bond to return to his dark and gritty roots.

“The prevailing wisdom at the time — which I would say I shared — was that the series, whilst very entertaining, had become rather spoof-like,” he said. “It was one-liners and raised eyebrows and it had become, let’s say, too lighthearted. And the producer, Mr. Broccoli, felt that, and he wanted to try and bring it back to something more like its original roots with those Sean Connery films.

“I had loved them all, and I had loved the books. But I think ultimately for anything to be successful, an audience must empathise. They must also get involved, but they must be given enough to suspend disbelief so that they’re truly able to become involved with the story. That’s not to say that there can’t be any comedy. There should always be comedy. Comedy is a great thing.

“So that was the loose framework that we sort of embarked on, but then you find that nobody else wants to change it all! So it wasn’t as easy as one would hope. I mean, now they have. I think now, with Daniel [Craig], they have. But that was, what, almost 20 years later that they actually embarked on something more believable?”

But despite often landing at the bottom of ‘Best Bond’ lists, coming just above George Lazenby, Dalton remains proud of his time as the martini-swilling, womanising, not-so-secret secret agent, labelling it as “a fantastic experience.”

“Everyone is interested in Bond. It’s almost like a bracket or a bubble in one’s life,” he added. “No one, no matter how well someone can communicate, can tell you — and I certainly can’t really communicate accurately — what it is like to be the actor playing James Bond. The only actors who can are the other actors who’ve played the part.

“It’s kind of astonishing, really. You are in kind of a bubble. It’s real, it’s valuable, it’s exciting, and it can give great pleasure. And yet it’s somehow unreal. No, forget the ‘unreal’ bit. But it’s somehow outside the normal course of what we all share in.”