The James Bond Bounce: How the Tuxedo Changed Each Actor’s Career

Only six actors have officially played British secret agent James Bond over the course of 63 years (with apologies to non-canon outliers David Niven and Barry Nelson), and as the world awaits the announcement of the seventh thespian who will don the famous tux, the debate over that person’s status and identity has begun anew: Should 007 be played by an established star, a complete unknown, or someone in between?

Bond has been essayed by all three types over the course of his screen career, and some of the best 007s have been those thought least likely to succeed. As the long-running franchise approaches perhaps its most consequential reboot yet, rumors suggest that young stars like Tom Holland, Jacob Elordi, and Harris Dickinson are on new Bond owner Amazon’s wish list for the role, while old rumor mill standbys like Henry Cavill and Aaron Taylor-Johnson lurk around the edges as well. Other reports suggest that director Denis Villeneuve recently tested an obscure British actor named Scott Rose-Marsh for the part, indicating that he may want to mold a completely unfamiliar face into the next iteration of 007.

Whoever makes the final cut, there’s no question that becoming James Bond changes an actor’s life for all time, as the role almost automatically catapults that person into a stardom they’ve never quite experienced. But what happens after that? How have the half-dozen Bonds we’ve already seen fared once their time in the tuxedo and Aston Martin was over? Based on the evidence below, it’s inconclusive whether playing James Bond becomes a perennial shadow over an actor’s career or a doorway to greater glory.

Sean Connery

The first (and still the best) actor to play James Bond on the big screen, Scotland’s Sean Connery wasn’t exactly a household name when he landed the role of 007, but the rugged charismatic Scot achieved that status with Bond and then some. The role turned Connery into an international superstar and sex symbol, creating a frenzy akin to the same decade’s Beatlemania. It wasn’t a surprise that he tired of it all, however, leaving the series after five films—although he played Bond again in 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, and a final time in 1983’s non-canonical Never Say Never Again.

Connery’s career during the 1970s and early ‘80s was hardly a bust, even if it turned out to be somewhat uneven. He worked several times with legendary director Sidney Lumet in now-forgotten yet underrated films like The Anderson Tapes and The Offence, while also starring in period epics such as The Wind and the Lion, The Man Who Would Be King, and A Bridge Too Far. Then there were his sci-fi and fantasy outings, including the bizarre Zardoz, Peter Hyams’ underseen space Western Outland, and Terry Gilliam’s beloved Time Bandits.

Connery’s career got its second wind in 1987 with his Oscar-winning portrayal of Irish cop Jimmy Malone in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. Becoming an elder statesman, action hero, and (again!) sex symbol, Connery’s later career included blockbusters like The Rock, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and The Hunt for Red October. Although he left Hollywood in exasperation after making The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in 2003, his status as one of cinema’s “real men” and as the gold standard for James Bond only grew up to and beyond his death in 2020.

George Lazenby

The man who replaced Sean Connery as 007 for just one movie—1969’s initially dismissed but now classic On Her Majesty’s Secret Service—was the only Australian to date to play the role and the only person to land it with no acting experience whatsoever. Following a tough childhood, George Lazenby left his homeland in the ‘60s and headed for London, finding work as a car salesman and eventually as a male model. Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli spotted him in a commercial and then shocked the world by hiring him to take over for the enormously popular Connery.

Although OHMSS wasn’t especially well-received at the time of its release, it’s now considered one of the best films in the series and Lazenby’s performance has been reappraised. The producers were willing to stick with him at the time as well, but some bad advice from his agent persuaded Lazenby to walk away after just the one film… and into cinematic obscurity.

Lazenby appeared in a random scattering of other movie and TV titles throughout the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and ‘00s, but nothing of significant note. He almost touched cinematic glory again when he was slated to appear opposite Bruce Lee in The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss, but after Lee’s untimely passing the film became more of a Golden Harvest curio than a foothold into a comeback. And even by this time, where he exited Italian Giallo in favor of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, Lazenby admitted he had gone “flat broke.” Still, he reportedly found wealth again by investing in real estate. All the while, his reputation and that of OHMSS grew, culminating in the release of a 2017 documentary about his colorful life, Becoming Bond. As of this writing, he is still with us, but suffering from dementia and being cared for in an assisted living facility in Southern California.

Roger Moore

Perhaps because he was the oldest actor to assume the role (45 at the time of his first outing, Live and Let Die), Roger Moore seemed the most comfortable with the Bond persona. He had been considered for the role when Connery first stepped down in 1967, and it seemed like the debonair actor was almost destined to take it on at some point. But Moore, who began his career in the 1940s and achieved worldwide success as the star of the long-running TV show The Saint, wasn’t freed up to play 007 until the early 1970s.

His seven-film run (the longest in canon), lasted from 1973 through ’85, by which time he was clearly aging out of the part. But his stint remains a generational one—he was the first Bond that many moviegoers experienced—and he delivered at least two all-timers in The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only. Already the most well-known actor to take the gig, Moore was seasoned enough to both enjoy the publicity and the characte, extending his initial four-film contract by three more entries.

Moore remained busy throughout the Bond era and afterward, although his run of movies during that period—including adventure films like Gold, Ffolkes, The Sea Wolves, and The Wild Geese—was not particularly distinctive. He did score a hit in 1981 with the Burt Reynolds-led ensemble action-comedy The Cannonball Run, but in that he was also obviously trading on 007 since he drove a tricked-out Aston Martin and played a Bond clone named Seymour Goldfarb Jr. Furthermore, he insisted throughout the movie that he was actually… Roger Moore.

Once Moore walked away from 007, he seemed to largely semi-retire, content to appear in smaller roles and cameos as the easygoing, affable British gent that he already seen as off-screen and on as Bond. His biggest post-007 roles were probably in 1992’s Bed and Breakfast, in which he played an amnesiac who shows up at the title establishment and changes the lives of the three women he finds there, and 1997’s Spice World, in which he played the head of the Spice Girls’ record label.

Moore also did a few TV guest shots, most notably on the J.J. Abrams/Jennifer Garner spy series, Alias, but he perhaps became even better known in his later years for his activism with UNICEF and PETA, doing humanitarian outreach on behalf of both children and animals. A gentleman to the end, he remained a model of British class and grace until his death in 2017.

Timothy Dalton

Like many British actors, including fellow 007s Roger Moore and Sean Connery, Timothy Dalton spent the early part of his career onstage, leaving school to tour with the National Youth Theatre before joining the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. He soon moved to TV and movies, scoring an early breakout role in the 1968 film The Lion in Winter (he was also considered for 007 at the time, as he was again in 1972 and 1980). From 1971 to 1978, he worked almost solely in the theater, perhaps giving him the most stage experience of any Bond to date.

Dalton’s arrival in the role of 007 (which he got only after Pierce Brosnan had to pull out due to Remington Steele commitments) heralded a return to a grittier, more serious MI6 agent after the rather more jovial, light-hearted approach of Moore. His first outing, 1987’s The Living Daylights, reflected this change and was both a box office and critical success. But his second film, 1989’s Licence to Kill, was a box office dud in North America. Nevertheless, Eon Productions was ready to stick with him and pre-production on his third film began in 1990. But legal and financial issues kept the franchise in limbo for four years, after which Dalton decided he no longer wished to be involved.

Following his stint as Bond, Dalton flourished in a steady if more low-key career, with roles in The Rocketeer, Hot Fuzz, Toy Story 3, Doctor Who, and many more. His over-the-top villainous turns in The Rocketeer and Hot Fuzz seemed to typecast him as a particularly cartoonish bad guy in Hollywood, which also led to similar work on shows like Yellowstone, although he also played law enforcement types in lesser-known projects like The Informant, The Tourist, and Made Men. Perhaps his best-known post-007 role is that of Malcolm Murray on the Showtime series Penny Dreadful, where he played a Great White Hunter in Victorian London who has gone gray. It’s both sinister and sympathetic, as it’s a character out for some form of redemption or penance. More recently Dalton played the Chief on the DC series Doom Patrol. Outside of live-action, he has also been heard as the voice of Mr. Pricklepants in Toy Story 3 and 4, as well as a handful of related shorts.

While Dalton managed to leverage his pair of Bond adventures into a reliable career as a character actor, he probably has the least “movie star”-type profile of any of the Bond actors, with the exception of George Lazenby. Of his time as Bond, Dalton told The AV Club, “It’s real, it’s valuable, it’s exciting, and it can give great pleasure. And yet, it’s somehow unreal.”

Pierce Brosnan

Forty-two years old when he landed the role of Bond (having been denied it eight years previously), Pierce Brosnan was the second-oldest 007 after Roger Moore. And like Moore, the Irish thespian was already a well-known TV star thanks to his four seasons leading Remington Steele on NBC. Brosnan’s career before Bond, Remington aside, started in the theater and quickly moved into films like The Long Good Friday, The Mirror Crack’d, The Lawnmower Man, and Mrs. Doubtfire, along with acclaimed miniseries like The Manions of America and Noble House.

Brosnan’s Bond—a mix of Connery’s toughness and Moore’s suavity—has been underrated performance-wise, while his four films only offer one standout in GoldenEye (1995) and a few moments of greatness in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and The World Is Not Enough (1999). He went out on a low note with 2002’s Die Another Day, but his era certainly brought Bond back to box office glory after the Dalton years and the six-year gap that followed. He also appeared in films like The Thomas Crown Affair and Mars Attacks! in between Bond outings.

Films like Thomas Crown, Dante’s Peak, and After the Sunset seemed manufactured to position Brosnan as a Hollywood leading man going forward, but that didn’t quite happen. Post-Bond, Brosnan has delivered solid and often terrific performances without a whole lot to show in terms of box office. The two Mamma Mia! films are an exception, but also remain among his worst-reviewed movies. Then again those movies are infectiously adored by a fanbase divorced from film critic circles; they even embraced Brosnan putting on a brave face while attempting to sing and dance, occassionally in disco pants. That stark departure from his suave 007 image was one of the many times in his post-Bond resume where the actor pursued a direction that could be labeled as anti-Bond.

His best films around this period also include The Tailor of Panama (in which he plays a dissolute, utterly corrupt MI6 agent), The Matador (quite possibly his finest work, in which he plays a debauched and aging hitman who’s going through a crisis of conscience and falling apart as a result), and The Ghost Writer (as a compromised former prime minister). Several of those again lean into perverting his 007 image. Meanwhile the less successful The November Man found him returning to a more traditional spy narrative.

He also featured recently in Black Bag (again, playing against the 007 persona as a malevolent, desk-bound intelligence chief), Black Adam, The Unholy Trinity (playing an Irish sheriff in the Old West), and The Thursday Murder Club, in which he’s a more earthy retired trade unionist—all films that, while not high-profile in the conventional sense, have reinforced his later career as a dependable and occasionally risk-taking character actor. In another similarity to Roger Moore, he’s been a UNICEF ambassador and has campaigned for cancer awareness, animal welfare, and environmental issues.

Daniel Craig

Like Timothy Dalton, Daniel Craig studied and performed with the National Youth Theatre in London and began his career on the stage. But also like most of his 007 colleagues, he made the jump to the screen fairly early with some of his most notable appearances coming in late ‘90s/early 2000s films like Elizabeth, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Road to Perdition. Lead roles in Layer Cake and Munich led to a jump not just in Craig’s visibility but the perception of him as a tough, rugged actor—a perception that arguably won him the role of Bond in 2005.

Craig redefined Bond over the course of five films and 15 years, bringing the character back to the brooding spy of the Ian Fleming novels while adding an extra layer of emotional and psychological depth. His run lifted the franchise to new box office heights but proved divisive: incontestable classics like Casino Royale (2006) and Skyfall (2012) gave way to the controversial Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021). And aside from Connery, he’s probably the actor who grappled most publicly with the role and the attendant stardom.

Yet at the same time, Craig has probably enjoyed more success outside of the Bond franchise than anyone not named Sean Connery. With larger gaps of time between his entries than usual, Craig starred in several films during his tenure as Bond. Some like The Invasion and Cowboys and Aliens, turned out to be tremendous flops, while others—The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Logan Lucky—were solid if unremarkable hits. He also returned to the stage, appearing on Broadway several times, most recently in a production of Macbeth in which he deliberately played the Scottish usurper as a coward.

Toward the end of his time as Bond, Craig found success with a new franchise: Rian Johnson’s Knives Out murder mysteries. The first one, released in theaters, was a box office smash and the sleeper hit of the 2019 holiday season. Afterward its sequel Glass Onion premiered on Netflix (as will the third entry, Wake Up Dead Man). In private detective Benoit Blanc, Craig seemed to find a role that offered him a kind of immediate freedom from 007: Blanc, with his genteel Southern charm (and accent), extroverted nature, and flamboyant mannerisms and queer-coding, was the exact opposite of Craig’s grim, tense, perpetually coiled, yet still womanizing Bond. It was also a springboard for even more daring roles, as seen in 2024’s surreal, sexually explicit Queer.

Like the five other actors who have officially played the world’s most famous spy, his time in the tux made Daniel Craig a superstar; and he’s leveraged that into a career that’s perhaps slightly less high-profile, but hopefully as rewarding as possible.