‘More men have walked on the Moon than played James Bond.’
pierce brosnan
The literary and onscreen worlds of Bond and Ian Fleming are ever entwined. Whilst the world looks to who can, will or should be the next James Bond 007, in the week of Bond’s seventieth celebrations it is worth remembering that actually – and curiously – more men have onscreen played the spy-maker Ian Fleming than James Bond.
Whilst it is a thankless task to separate the author from his creation’s cinematic tropes, Ian Lancaster Fleming has been on more studio call sheets than 007 himself. Nearly all of them have had one eye on the movie Bond than the real Fleming. And the crossover casting between both the movie and book Bond sees Charles Dance (For Your Eyes Only), director Mat Whitecross (Fleming – The Man Who Would Be Bond, The Sound of 007) and Tobias Menzies (Quantum of Solace) all straddling both worlds.
Charles Dance (GOLDENEYE, 1989), Leo Fenn and Jason Connery (SPYMAKER, 1990), Ben Daniels (BONDMAKER, 2005), Skip Goeree (BERNHARD – SCOUNDREL OF ORANGE, 2010), Tobias Menzies (ANY HUMAN HEART, 2010), James D’Arcy (AGE OF HEROES, 2011), Jeremy Crutchley (A CARIBBEAN MYSTERY, 2013), Dominic Cooper (FLEMING -THE MAN WHO WOULD BE BOND, 2014), Sean Maguire (TIMELESS, 2016 – 2018), Scotty Ray (COME BEFORE WINTER, 2017), Johnny Flynn (OPERATION MINCEMEAT, 2021), and Edward Baker-Duly (A SPY AMONG FRIENDS, 2022) have all presented the author to varying degrees of accuracy, history and narrative.
And this does not even begin to include the theatre, commemoration and docu-drama portrayals of Fleming who have been played by the likes of Mark Burgess, Jeremy Irons and Jonathan Pryce.
The best thing right now is that when it comes to onscreen Ians – the definitive biopic and proper dramatical look at Fleming has not really been made… yet.
