Why David Bowie Turned Down Playing A Bond Villain

The sad news that David Bowie died aged 69 in 2015 sent shockwaves around the world.

Not only will he be remembered as a groundbreaking music artist, but he’ll also be fondly remembered as a true acting talent working with acclaimed directors like Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, Nicholas Roeg, and David Lynch during his life.

One tantalising role that he declined though was that of a James Bond villain. When the Broccolis announced 1985′s ‘A View To A Kill’, alongside the news that Roger Moore would once again return as 007, was the revelation that David Bowie would be playing the villain Max Zorin.

However, the announcement would ultimately prove to be premature as the ‘Let’s Dance’ star turned the film down.

After the release of ‘Octopussy’ (now regarded as one of the worst Bond films), the franchise was in the creative doldrums, and so the producers decided the series needed to appeal to the MTV generation after the channel had successfully launched in 1981.

They decided they needed a rock star to play the villain and began actively courting Bowie to play the role of the genetically-modified industrialist Max Zorin. The script was written with Bowie in mind, and there are hints of the star in the finished film, with the Zorin role played in the end by Christopher Walken, after being also turned down by Sting.

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With his power suits, bleached blonde locks, and overwhelming narcissism it’s not hard to imagine Bowie as Max Zorin but, as he told NME back in 1984, he thought his fame would add comic overtones to the part.

“Yes, I was offered that,” he said. “After Sting? I rather think it was the other way about. I think for an actor it’s probably an interesting thing to do, but I think that for somebody from rock it’s more of a clown performance. And I didn’t want to spend five months watching my double fall off mountains.”

The producers did manage to squeeze in one pop star into the cast though in the shape of Grace Jones as May Day. In her autobiography, she revealed that the filmmakers also approached Bowie’s ‘Dancing In The Streets’ collaborator Mick Jagger to play Zorin, but he too turned it down.

She notes that Walken’s appearance in the film remained distinctly Bowie-esque calling him “lean, mean, blond, and suavely narcissistic.”

The Broccolis attempt to get down with the kids failed miserably, despite its amazing Duran Duran theme song. ‘A View To Kill’ panned by critics mainly because - at 57 - Moore was just too old to play 007. “Moore isn’t just long in the tooth,” said the Washington Post, “He’s got tusks, and what looks like an eye job has given him the pie-eyed blankness of a zombie.”

The franchise returned in 1987 with a new Bond in the shape of Timothy Dalton for ‘The Living Daylights’, but we’d never get our chance to see David Bowie as a Bond villain. However, if he hadn’t turned out, we may never have seen him as Jareth, the Goblin King, in 1986′s ‘Labyrinth’, so every cloud…

RIP David Bowie.

Here we remember David Bowie’s greatest movie roles.

Image credits: Rex Features