Who do you picture when reading the Bond novels?

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  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent

    Sometimes it's Craig, but quite often if it's not a sort of vague Bond-type (probably the guy from the Daily Express strips) I end up having Lazenby pop into my head. I think because he's vaguely of the right period and, because he didn't really bring much personality to the role when he played it, he works as a sort of blank slate. I can't see Connery because the dialogue of the books doesn't really suit his style of performance.

  • Shady TreeShady Tree London, UKPosts: 2,965MI6 Agent
    edited March 2022

    When reading any of the Fleming novels (and other Bond novels situated in the Fleming continuity - novelisations excepted) I've always imagined Bond vaguely as the Connery of DN and FRWL, but even leaner of face and with the comma of hair added, the scar and the clear grey-blue eyes. No images of other Bond actors intrude on my consciousness when immersed in reading the novels, nor do Connery's later looks as Bond.

    I'd explain this partly by the fact that ITV was broadcasting the early Bond films for the first time on British television at around the time (1975-76) that I was avidly reading Fleming novels (although I think I'd made a start on my reading a couple of years before then).

    True, Moore's image as Bond was, at the time, on the covers of film tie-in paperback reissues of 'Live And Let Die' and 'The Man With The Golden Gun' - and, for example, on the cover of Geoff Love's popular tribute album of the Bond themes - but Connery's image remained at least as potent and, in my mind as a reader, suffused Fleming's ouevre, not just the titles that had been made as Bond films starring Connery.

    Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
  • Miles MesservyMiles Messervy Posts: 1,757MI6 Agent

    When reading Fleming, I have always pictured something similar to John Hamm, circa 2008. The first time I ever saw John Hamm I immediately thought: “wow, he looks like Fleming’s Bond!

  • The Red KindThe Red Kind EnglandPosts: 3,119MI6 Agent

    Can vary, but often Jason Isaacs for me.


    "Any of the opposition around..?"
  • superadosuperado Regent's Park West (CaliforniaPosts: 2,651MI6 Agent

    I think the Mad Men producers knew what they had in Jon Hamm and the 60s Bond vibe he exuded


    "...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent

    Yes tend to agree there, it's someone very like him in my mind too.

  • k5211k5211 UKPosts: 164MI6 Agent

    Don Draper is IMHO more 'Flemings Bond' than any Bond actor in this short scene. He is always my imagined literary Bond. I wish they could replicate this seriousness in the films than the purvis and wade nonsense.

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,059Chief of Staff

    No apologies for quoting myself, since it was over 12 years ago now!

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