James Bond has been played by six different actors across more than 60 years of movies, and everybody seems to have their favorite. Some prefer Sean Connery, others grew up with Roger Moore, and plenty still consider Daniel Craig the definitive 007. But it turns out that having the wrong Bond can also cost a studio a director, and one of Hollywood’s biggest action filmmakers has revealed that he actually turned down the chance to join the franchise because he didn’t like the man wearing the tuxedo.
Speaking exclusively with Collider’s Steve Weintraub while promoting his new action thriller The Beast, director Renny Harlin revealed that he was once offered the chance to direct a James Bond movie, but turned it down because Timothy Dalton wasn’t his preferred choice for the character. Harlin, whose credits include Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, and Deep Blue Sea, explained that he had even met with longtime Bond producer Barbara Broccoli before deciding he couldn’t commit to the project. When Weintraub asked which movie he had almost directed that might surprise people, Harlin recalled, “I was offered a James Bond movie in the early ‘90s, mid-90s. It was Daylights. I had the meeting with Barbara Broccoli and the whole team and everything. Of course, I wanted to be part of the James Bond legacy.” He continued, explaining:
“I’ll be frankly, completely honest and say the reason I didn’t do it was I told them, and totally, honestly, this is with no disrespect to this actor, but Timothy Dalton was at that point Bond, and I said, ‘He’s not my Bond. I love this series, and I think my Bond is a different guy.’ And I said, ‘If you cast a new Bond,’ which happens every few years, ‘then I’m totally in. But I’m not going to do a Timothy Dalton Bond movie.’ So we parted ways, and then maybe two years went by, and then they made the next Bond movie, and they replaced Timothy Dalton. So, Timothy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you fired or anything, but it’s like, why couldn’t they do it when I was there anyhow?”
Collider Exclusive · James Bond Personality Quiz Which James Bond Actor Are You Most Like? Connery · Moore · Dalton · Brosnan · Lazenby · Craig
Six actors. Six completely different visions of the same man — dangerous, charming, complicated, and almost certainly wearing a very good suit. Only one of them shares your particular way of moving through the world. Eight questions will figure out which Bond you really are.
🏴Connery
😄Moore
🎭Dalton
✨Brosnan
🤵Lazenby
💠Craig
01
How do you carry yourself when you walk into a room? Bond is always the most interesting person in the room. The question is how he makes you feel it.
02
How do you handle a dangerous situation? Every Bond faces it differently. What does your version look like?
03
How do you charm someone you need on your side? Bond always gets what he needs. The method varies considerably.
04
How do you handle your emotions on the job? Every Bond deals with this differently. Most of them not particularly well.
05
How would your colleagues describe your working style? MI6 has opinions about all of its 00s. What are theirs about you?
06
How do you feel about operating within the rules? The licence to kill comes with terms and conditions. Not everyone reads them.
07
What is your relationship with love? Every Bond has a different answer. None of them have found it easy.
08
When the mission is over, how do you want to be remembered? The name is Bond. The rest is entirely up to the man behind it.
The Name Has Been Determined Your Bond Is…
Six actors. One role. Your answers point to the Bond who shares your presence, your method, and your particular way of carrying the weight of being the most dangerous person in the room.
Dr. No — You Only Live Twice · 1962–1967
Sean Connery
You are the original — and you carry that fact without needing to announce it. There is an authority in the way you occupy a room that others spend careers trying to replicate.
You don’t explain yourself, justify yourself, or soften yourself for anyone’s comfort. The confidence is structural, not performed.
Connery’s Bond established everything — the tone, the danger, the cool — because Connery himself had the innate presence to make something that had never existed feel inevitable.
You share that quality: the sense that you were always going to end up exactly here, doing exactly this.
The name is Bond. In your case, it always was.
Live and Let Die — A View to a Kill · 1973–1985
Roger Moore
You understand something that more serious people miss: that wit is its own form of intelligence, and that making people laugh is not a retreat from danger but a way of mastering it.
Moore’s Bond is underrated precisely because the effortlessness looks easy — and effortlessness is the hardest thing to manufacture.
You have the same quality: a lightness that disarms people before they realise how sharp you actually are.
The raised eyebrow, the perfectly timed quip, the refusal to be rattled — these are not affectations. They are a philosophy about how to move through a world that would like to take itself too seriously.
You have never let it.
The Living Daylights · Licence to Kill · 1987–1989
Timothy Dalton
You took the role seriously when everyone wanted you to coast — and that refusal to take the easy version of anything is the most defining thing about you.
Dalton’s Bond has genuine moral weight: he feels the cost of what he does, he has lines he won’t cross, and he is not interested in the version of himself that pretends otherwise.
You share that intensity. You push harder than the situation technically requires, because you have a standard and you hold yourself to it.
He was ahead of his time — the Bond the franchise wasn’t quite ready for yet, arriving exactly when he was meant to.
You know what that feels like.
GoldenEye — Die Another Day · 1995–2002
Pierce Brosnan
You are the complete package — and you know it, which is part of what makes you so effective and occasionally so infuriating to the people around you.
Brosnan arrived at the role looking exactly like Bond was supposed to look, and he delivered on that expectation with a professionalism that made it seem effortless.
You have the same quality: a smooth competence, a charm that operates like a precision instrument, and the ability to make even difficult things look like they weren’t.
His era was the most commercially successful in the franchise’s history. There is a reason for that.
The reason is that some people simply fit their moment perfectly. You are one of those people.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service · 1969
George Lazenby
You stepped into something enormous with less preparation than anyone around you thought was sufficient — and you delivered something genuine anyway, which is the more impressive achievement.
Lazenby’s single outing is, by many measures, one of the finest Bond films ever made — and he is not a small part of why.
You share his quality of raw authenticity: less polished than the alternatives, more honest for it, capable of something real that technique alone can’t produce.
He was underestimated, and then he wasn’t, and then history caught up with him.
You are the kind of person history catches up with. Give it time.
Casino Royale — No Time to Die · 2006–2021
Daniel Craig
You stripped everything back and found what was underneath — and what was underneath was harder, more honest, and more human than anyone expected.
Craig’s Bond is the franchise’s most psychologically complete: a man doing a brutal job, carrying its costs imperfectly, capable of love and loss in ways that can’t be dismissed.
You share that depth. You don’t hide behind the role or the charm or the suit — you let the work show what it actually costs.
He was controversial from the moment he was announced and definitive by the time he was finished. The sceptics became the believers.
That arc — of being underestimated and then undeniable — is one you know intimately.
Could Renny Harlin Have Directed Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond?
Pierce Brosnan as James Bond 007Keith Hamshere/Mgm/Eon/Kobal/Shutterstock
Dalton played Bond in just two movies, The Living Daylights in 1987 and Licence to Kill in 1989, before leaving the franchise. Pierce Brosnan eventually took over for 1995’s GoldenEye, which brought 007 back to theaters after a six-year absence. Harlin was one of the go-to action directors in the early 1990s, following his success with Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, both of which demonstrated his eye for thrills and also an ability to deliver at the box office, both qualities that would have been valued by those behind Bond. There is one detail worth noting, however. Harlin refers to The Living Daylights during the interview, although that movie was released in 1987, several years before the early-to-mid-1990s period he describes.
The director ultimately never got his chance to make a Bond movie, but he’s still making action thrillers nearly four decades after his Hollywood breakthrough. His latest, The Beast, stars Samuel L. Jackson and Joel Kinnaman in a story about a coup against the United States government that forces the president to use the presidential limousine’s classified defensive and offensive capabilities to survive.
The Beast is in theaters now, having opened on October 9. Stay tuned at Collider for more, and check out Weintraub’s full interview with Harlin now.
