Daniel Day-Lewis Was Wanted for James Bond by This Bond Writer
James Bond has been played by many actors throughout his years on the big screen. But if one director had it his way, Daniel Day-Lewis would’ve been the ideal choice to portray the character.
This director felt Daniel Day-Lewis was how Ian Fleming pictured James Bond
William Boyd once opened up on the actor he felt made a perfect match for the MI6 agent. Boyd was both closely connected to the Bond mythology as well as the film industry. As a screen writer, he’s even worked worked with a couple of Bond actors himself like Daniel Craig and Pierce Brosnan. Still, Boyd felt that Day-Lewis might be the Bond that resembled Fleming’s version the most.
“If there was going to be an actor to play my James Bond, I’d choose another actor who’s been in a film of mine and who is also called Daniel,” Boyd once told The Independent. “Daniel Day-Lewis actually resembles the Bond that Fleming describes.”
Boyd noted how Fleming would describe James Bond as looking like a singer by the name of Hoagy Carmichael. But, to Boyd, that still wasn’t too far off from what Day-Lewis’ appearance.
“He was a tall, lean, rangy, very dark haired good looking man. there’s a sense that image is what he saw his Bond looking like. Daniel Day-Lewis looks a bit like Hoagy Carmichael,” Boyd said.
Boyd also took the time to comment on Daniel Craig’s Bond films. Although he enjoyed them, he believed they were distant interpretations of Fleming’s character.
“The current Bond is fantastically interesting even though the current films are half a century on than the novels. The link gets fainter and fainter. The Bond films are all contemporary,” Boyd said.
Why Ian Fleming initially didn’t want Sean Connery as James Bond
Despite his successors, Sean Connery is still seen as the definitive James Bond to many. But in the beginning, Fleming had his doubts about the actor. Fleming intentionally wrote Bond as a very flat, unremarkable figure in the beginning. And these were traits he didn’t see Connery having.
“When I wrote the first one, in 1953. I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened,” Fleming once wrote to New Yorker. “One of the bibles of my youth was Birds of the West Indies, by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist, I thought, My God, that’s the dullest name I’ve ever heard, so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exciting one. Mrs. Bond once wrote me a letter thanking me for using it.”
According to HuffPost, Connery was far away from this image.
“He’s not what I envisioned of James Bond looks,” Fleming said. “I’m looking for Commander Bond and not an overgrown stunt man.”
Eventually, Fleming warmed up to Connery, calling the late actor an “admirable Bond.”
Daniel Craig read Ian Fleming’s James Bond book for ‘Quantum of Solace’
Although his James Bond was set in a different time than Fleming’s, Craig still wanted to look back on the author’s work for help. He revisited the source material for one of his Bond sequels, which further helped inform his character.
“While we were shooting Quantum, I went back and reread the Fleming novels again, and started making further assessments about how [the author] perceived the character,” Craig once told Cigar Aficionado. “And the James Bond he writes is an emotional character; he’s not just a robot. Obviously that’s what we tried to get more of into this movie—you know, that he loves good food, he loves beautiful locations, he loves beautiful women. He has a genuine love for life’s best. But he’s also very ruthless.”
