Who Will Actually Be the Next James Bond? An In-Depth Analysis

So, here we are at last. No Time To Die came and went, Daniel Craig has ducked out of MI6 and the question turns to who will be the next James Bond.

And really: who knows. You might as well get the Ouija board out to ask the spirit of Cubby Broccoli what he reckons. And what makes a Bond, anyway? Barbara Broccoli, who oversees the series alongside Michael G Wilson, says he's now a more mutable figure than he used to be. So yes: that means James Bond doesn't have to be white. Bond "should be British,” Broccoli said in 2021, and added that “British can be any [ethnicity or race]".

But he can't – for now, at least – be a woman. "We should create roles for women, not just turn a man into a woman," Broccoli said, a sentiment Craig echoed in a couple of No Time To Die promo interviews.

The Variety interview also gave us a couple of other pointers as to where Bond might go next, and who could fit the profile. Most pressingly, it needs to be someone who's ready to knuckle under for the long haul.

"A lot of people think, 'Oh yeah, it’d be fun to do one,'" Broccoli said. "Well, that ain’t gonna work."

Casting director Debbie McWilliams told the Radio Times in 2023 that the last time there was a changing of the Bond guard, one idea was to cast a very young actor – someone even in their twenties – to pick up the mantle. You can see the appeal: get the right person while they're malleable and keen, and they might want to be Bond for a good 15 years or more. In the event, it didn't feel quite right.

"We did look at a lot of younger actors. and I just don't think they had the gravitas, they didn't have the experience, they didn't have the mental capacity to take it on, because it's not just the part they're taking on, it's a massive responsibility," McWilliams said.

In the end, it was decided that there was 007 couldn't be too fresh-faced. "So we kind of scrubbed that idea and went back to the drawing board and started again."

Along with these pointers, there are a few Bond casting orthodoxies to guide us. Traditionally, it’s been a role which elevates actors to the A-list rather than being an A-list vehicle. Look at where past Bonds were in their careers when they got the gig. Sean Connery was an undistinguished jobbing actor best known for fighting leprechauns in Disney’s begorrah-and-blimey Irish tale Darby O’Gill and the Little People. George Lazenby was a car salesman turned chocolate advert mascot who bumped into Broccoli at the barbers. Pierce Brosnan had a perm.

You'll need a history of hefty, critically respected film parts these days. Then there’s the general sense of Bond-ishness: Connery "moved like a jungle cat," as Cubby's wife Dana Broccoli put it, and that sense of muscular virility has been an essential part of each Bond actor on screen.

Perhaps most importantly, you also need to be in tune with the era in which the new Bond exists. Whoever it is will have to do the same scene for their audition: the one in From Russia With Love where Bond suspects an intruder has come for him in his hotel room, only to find it's Tatiana Romanova trying to put her moves on him.

"Anyone who can bring that scene off is right for Bond," said Wilson. "It’s tough to do."

Quite what the next incarnation of Bond will embody depends who plays him. These are the frontrunners.

Next James Bond

Lashana Lynch

Let's start, in time-honoured spy film fashion, with a red herring: Lashana Lynch is the next 007. As you'll have seen in No Time to Die, she goads Bond that he probably thought they'd retire his number, as if MI6 is Birmingham City and he's a swole Jude Bellingham. So, job done. We can all go home.

Ah, but, wait a minute – she's not the next James Bond. By the end of No Time To Die she's not even 007 anymore, handing Bond his shirt back at the last. In fact, as Barbara Broccoli has made very clear, James Bond will never be a woman. What's happened here is a bit of confusion between a job title, and a character.

On the plus side, it does open up the possibility of a Nomi spin-off, perhaps penned by No Time to Die scriptwriter Phoebe Waller-Bridge, which would jibe with Broccoli's preference to create new female characters rather than recast old males ones. Then again, we've been here before with Jinx after Die Another Day.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Seemingly out of the blue in November 2022, a new name was on everyone’s lips: Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Rumours suggested that he was top of the list for Bond bosses. A year later, The Sun reported the British actor had been for a secret screen test with the producers including Barbara Broccoli at Pinewood studios, and apparently he smashed it: "Aaron went for a screen test to be the next Bond in September and producers and Barbara loved him. He is now one of the front-runners."

Then, in March of this year, the same paper went out on a limb to claim that Taylor-Johnson was about to put pen to paper on the role. He’d never really been thought of as a contender the tail-end of 2022, which was strange when you think about it, as he’s already proven his acting chops as Action Man in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Godzilla and Tenet, while simultaneously showing thespian range in movies like Anna Karenina, A Million Little Pieces, and his breakthrough smash in which he starred as a young John Lennon, Nowhere Boy. Plus – and we can't emphasise this enough – he is absolutely massive.

Also working perfectly in his favour is his age. At 33, he fits within the new parameters of the casting for 007. Taylor-Johnson’s staying schtum at the moment.

Jamie Campbell Bower

Very much an outsider, but there are reasons to think he might be the long shot to back here. He’s very good looking, which never hurts. At 35, he’s about the right age. He’s slight and has an elfin kind of face, which would make for a clear break with the beefy ruggedness of Daniel Craig. Bower’s also got a bit of cachet from Stranger Things, in which he played the fourth season’s big bad Henry Creel/Vecna. He’s been in bands and makes music, so he could do a two-fer and sing the theme song too. Way back in the mists of time he got some stage experience. Plus! His great-great-great-great-grandfather on his mum’s side was Lieutenant Governor of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. That’s got to count for something. The case against? Not much in the way of leading roles, and his fine features give him a real skill for looking evil and haunting rather than heroically pained. A possible future villain? Perhaps. But on the side of MI6? Feels unlikely.

Jonathan Bailey

The 35-year-old is in the centre of the Venn diagram of Bond hopeful qualities: right age; right theatrical background, including productions at the Donmar and the National, as well as the right level of pre-existing fame. You know him as Lord Anthony Bridgerton from Bridgerton, which – and apologies to any Bridgeheads in here – perhaps isn’t the most strenuous role he could have ridden to prominence on, but it has at least shown that he’s a solid guy to have at the head of a big franchise and isn’t about to go stray from a party line like George Lazenby did. And Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who co-wrote on No Time To Die, called him “unbelievably charismatic in real life and so energetic”. So, if he needs someone to put in a good word, presumably Phoebe would be able to drop Barbara Broccoli a voice note. An outsider, but one to keep an eye on.

Leo Woodall

After you’ve managed to stop sobbing at the ending of One Day – don’t worry, you will in due course – you might reflect on exactly why you’re sobbing so hard. “It’s because of that terrible thing that happens,” you might sniff, welling up again. And yeah, it is. But it’s also because a young, good looking British actor acted you into it. The White Lotus’ Leo Woodall did that to you, the swine.

He’s very, very young – just about to break into his late twenties – but given the glacial pace of the Bond machine he could easily be in his late thirties before a decision is actually made. True, he’s not got any high profile stage experience and his hits so far have leaned more toward drama than run-shoot-punch-ow action. But at a time when it might be smart for Bond to pivot toward an actor who feels like a more Gen Z outline he’s a softer, slightly more ruddy-cheeked type with a strong element of sauciness to him as well. And encouragingly, he’s been lined up for a techno-thriller called Prime Target in which he’ll play a maths post-grad who finds a way of accessing every computer in the world. Sounds like an early Nineties Pierce Brosnan joint to us – and you know what happened next.

Barry Keoghan

Of the new school of soft, interesting leading men, one is riding higher than anyone else at the minute – and all he had to do was drink that bathwater, shag a grave and boogie through a country pile in the nip. Keoghan has transferred from one-to-watch lists to straight-up must-watch in the last six months or so, but his profile is very different to the usual Bond orbiters. He's pretty buff, but he can also play dweeby. He's not a lantern-jawed smoothie, but he's definitely a good-looking guy. He's got indie cred through The Banshees of Inisherin, The Green Knight and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, but he's also popped up in Marvel and DC movies and Saltburn gave him the big heave over the top.

He's not yet properly hooked up to another massive cinematic juggernaut like Pattinson, even if it looks like he'll be opposite Patto as the Joker in those movies, and we've seen him smack someone in the mouth in Masters of the Air. Plus: imagine the discourse when Keoghan turns up to the premiere wearing a tank top with nothing underneath, or massive white flares, or something equally fun. There'd be meltdown. There'd be bruhaha. There'd be scandal. It'd be excellent. A strong possibility.

Paul Mescal

He's veeeeery young. But my god: Paul Mescal is veeeeeery good. He was nominated for his first Oscar this year at 27 years old for Aftersun, and he's about as yearned-for as any man under 30 on the planet. He also appears to be just a lovely boy, and an Esquire cover star. If Craig's Bond was a craggy, hard-boiled, careworn interpretation, there's no harder an about-turn than going to the internet's soft-centred boyfriend.

It's probably too early for him to be launching himself into the Bond machine, and to this point he's given every indication that the indie world is where his heart really lies. There's been an Irish Bond before, of course, but Pierce Brosnan was absolutely gagging for a mega-role for ages and made a few pseudo-Bond films along the way. (Do track down Live Wire if you can. Absolutely mad.)

When our friends at Digital Spy asked him about Bond he was characteristically self-effacing.

"Would I play Bond? Yeah? I don't know. If it ever came my way, we'd have a discussion about it... I don't want to say yes or no. I am a massive fan, and will continue to be, regardless."

Callum Turner

Following the odds and trying to suss who's up and who's down can be a bit of a fool's errand – particularly at this point in proceedings, they're drifting and shortening based on very little other than vibes. So we'll take the shifting odds on Callum Turner with a pinch of salt, but it's worth looking at him too. He's 33, and you might have seen him in the last two films in the Fantastic Beasts series. What separates him from the legions of other mid-level thirty-something would-be Bonds with jawlines and backgrounds in theatre is that he's one of the leads in Masters of the Air, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg's follow-up to Band of Brothers, opposite Austin Butler. That kind of thing, if it goes well, is the kind of thing which catapults you into a league where you never have to be in rot like Assassin's Creed ever again. There's a lot riding on Masters of the Air – potentially even a shot at the Bond hot seat.

Daryl McCormack

A recent climber, and a good name to have in your back pocket to make you look a couple of steps ahead. You’ll recognise him from the last couple of series of Peaky Blinders and Good Luck to You Leo Grande, and you may have seen him in the BBC’s thriller The Woman in the Wall. You can see the appeal. He’s a good-looking guy with a solid background on the Irish stage as well as being in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore in London. At the same time he’s not too big yet, and he’s got a lot to prove. That’s prime Bond territory.

At 31 he’s another of the Young Bond Hopefuls Collective (they should unionise or something) who might miss out this time, but it also feels like he’s cooking something the Bond machine will like the look of. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

Robert Aramayo

Hull-born Aramayo would be the first Yorkshire Bond, which would push that particular county beyond being simply insufferable and to the point where we should start investigating whether we can saw it off and cast it into the North Sea.

You've seen him as the young Ned Stark in Game of Thrones' later seasons, and he was young Elrond in The Rings of Power. Bit of a thing for young versions of fantasy characters, clearly. He's 31, so he'd be a very fresh-faced Bond, and a relative lack of heavyweight drama experience might count against him too.

Sam Claflin

After a 2023 spent riding high in both the TV charts – and the music charts, with the tie-in album Aurora – for his role as Billy Dunne in the series about the fictional band Daisy Jones & The Six, Claflin has definitely made the crossover to bonafide star on both sides of the Atlantic.

This Norfolk boy’s breakthrough role was in 2011’s Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and from there he landed parts in the YA franchise The Hunger Games, and was featured as the go-to heartthrob in several other tear-jerker romance flicks like Me Before You and Love, Rosie. But as he became more established on both the small and big screens, he moved into darker territory, pushing the boundaries of how people perceived him as an actor. Claflin: The Villain Era had begun, with some of his worst ever characters including a rapist in The Nightingale and as the real-life fascist leader Oswald Mosley in Peaky Blinders.

So now we know he can do dark, can he do Bond? His fans certainly seem to think so, as they hit Twitter regularly with their affirmations that he’s exactly the man for the job. At 37, he certainly fits the right age bracket for 007, and looking at his filmography he’s got around enough now to be able to convince producers of his range. He could end up being the dark horse.

Jacob Elordi

Euphoria's Nate Jacobs is one of the hottest young actors around and the other Aussie Bond George Lazenby has been through a bit of a critical renaissance over the last few years – not least within the Bond universe itself, having been given his flowers about 50 years late in all the nods and references in No Time To Die. So could it be time for another tall man from Down Under to endure a barrage of red-top headlines mashing Bond iconography with laboured puns about kangaroos, shrimps and barbies?

Well, no. The boy is 26 years old, and he really looks it too. He's dashing, but you envisage him more clearly as an earnest badminton prodigy than a trained killer.

He's one to keep an eye on, though. If playing Elvis in Sofia Coppola's upcoming Priscilla does anything like what playing Elvis in Elvis did for Austin 'The Pelvis and also The Mad Accent' Butler, then he'll be a hotter property than ever soon. Stick him in the fridge and come back to him in a decade or so.

Lucien Laviscount

There’s a little burble of support building for the Emily in Paris heartthrob and there’s a lot to like. He’s 31, he’s just about known enough, he’s from Burnley, and – lordy lordy – those pecs are outrageous. One thing we’d note is that he’s a stubble guy, and stubble guys have never been Bond guys. Usually when Bond has stubble it’s a sign that he’s on his arse: think of that bit in Skyfall where he fails the MI6 tests in his joggers and just-back-from-the-dead shadow, then Eve Moneypenny gives him a shave and he’s back to swanking around in full Bond mode. He’d also be the first Bond to have come up through Grange Hill, Skins, Corrie and the 2011 edition of Celebrity Big Brother. Is that a vibe? It all depends on what project he picks next.

Theo James

Perhaps better known to you as The White Lotus' finance bro Cameron Sullivan, the 38-year-old beefcake has shot to the top of some fans' lists for Craig's successor. And you can see why. Not every man can wear a double-breasted suit jacket like it's nothing. The Bond question has been put to him too.

"I love some of the Sean Connery movies, but I think they need to do something else. Do you know what I mean?" James told Sirius XM in January 2023. Yes, Theo, we do know.

"They need to really go with a reinvention of it in a different way..."

Couldn't agree more! Yes!

"...and that wouldn’t be me."

Oh. Well, alright then. Fine. You're already halfway to having the name of the character people want you to play, but you're going to blow it back in their faces are you? Hmm? Theo James Bond? Hmm?

Liam Hemsworth

In a chat with TMZ, former Bond George Lazenby threw his weight behind fellow "good-looking Aussie dude" and baby of the Hemsworth acting brood Liam, adding that the new guy – whoever they are – had to be "crazy enough, arrogant enough, confident enough, ambitious enough to take on the role".

Whether they also have to be crazy enough, arrogant enough, confident enough, ambitious enough to walk out of the role after one film, call Bond a brute, grow a beard and declare that, "Peace – that's the message now," before watching their attempt to elbow their way into the New Hollywood generation fall flat remains to be seen.

But anyway: Liam Hemsworth. Bit of a curveball, to be quite honest. Good age, good-looking, and he'd be the first vegan Bond. But he's got a track record of being in (sorry Liam) generally quite rubbish films, leaving aside the Hunger Games years and maybe bits of The Dressmaker. We're looking for chops here. And chops he may or may not have, but Hemmo's chops have yet to stretched in the way that a neo-Bond needs them to have been.

Andrew Garfield

Another curveball, but the former Peter Parker has the thespy cred, the dashing looks and the flair for tailoring which a sneaky run for Bond can make. Performances in London and on Broadway in Angels in America cemented him as a Proper Actor as well as a very charming screen presence, and that's the kind of combo that's fairly rare to find in someone who's roughly the right age to become Bond. He might well have had enough time away from Spidey doing his own thing to consider getting back into a giant franchise too.

Plus, he'd make for an excellent Bond ambassador across the pond thanks to the fact of his transatlanticness. Despite sounding like literally any boy you'd bump into in an All Bar One in Guildford, Garfield was born in Los Angeles and the hype/palaver/whatever around the first American Bond could be a very interesting angle. And he'd be the first Jewish Bond too.

Then again, he's knocking on 40 – not that you'd know it of the wee cherub – so if it's going to happen it needs to happen right this second.

Will Poulter

We like a bit of Will Poulter over here, and the 30-year-old is exactly the kind of left-field choice it's fun to slap on the table when the conversation comes up. He got an Emmy nod for Dopesick and skipped the Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which suggests his nose for a good project is still sniffing functionally. While he's not done a big actioner yet he's built like a brick outhouse and a role in Guardians of the Galaxy 3 certainly let him flex that muscle. At 6'3, he'd be the tallest Bond yet too. Sean Connery was next tallest at 6'2, while Daniel Craig was the shortest at 5'10. The Bond bosses tend to take each new incarnation in a different direction, after all – so why not upwards? The Long Bond years beckon.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor's Bond would, you feel, make for a more cerebral spy than Craig's man mountain. He's certainly got the kind of acting chops which Bond now demands – recall 12 Years a Slave, and a string of Shakespeare and Chekhov productions at the National, Donmar and Royal Court theatres – and could recentre the character with more of the froideur and stillness which Fleming first gave him.

Not that he can't smack bad lads around. He's done that often enough, but none of his actioners have really clicked like his more thinky, quiet films have. For all that the last few years have seen Ejiofor going bigger and smashier in his choices (The Old Guard, The Old Guard 2, Infinite, Doctor Strange) he's retained more than enough of an intellectual vibe to push Bond in a different direction.

Unfortunately, time is rather against the 46-year-old, and with his toes still very much in the MCU he could do without carrying a gigantic franchise on his back. Another one to file under 'definitely could do it, but why would you when you could just do a Marvel cameo every other year for the next decade and make some nice character pieces in between'.

Harry Styles

Now then. In the absence of another young British man putting on a tuxedo for the first time, the mantle of 'young Bond guy' has passed from Regé-Jean Page to Hazza. In the same way that everyone always loses their marbles when a beautiful man wears a suit, he's been mentioned as a possible Bond and is hovering around 50/1 in the betting currently.

But he's very, very young, and the one-two opening salvo of Don't Worry Darling and My Policeman haven't set his acting career alight. And at any rate, however good an actor Styles really is, you get the feeling this would be too much like stunt-casting for the current Bond hierarchy to swallow. He could make Roger Moore's extravagantly lapel'd Seventies wardrobe work all over again though. Justice for the safari suit from The Man With the Golden Gun at last.

Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù

Gangs of London's Dìrísù would be one of the more interesting, highbrow picks for Bond. Up to now he's mostly done a mixture of think-y period pieces (Mr Malcolm's List, Mothering Sunday, The Halcyon) and slightly dystopian dramas (Silent Night, Tides) with one of the best British horrors of recent years thrown in too (His House, which he's pictured starring in above).

Smacking bad lads in the service of queen and country would be a bit of an about-turn, but that thoughtful sensibility is something that Barbara Broccoli liked in Daniel Craig as well as his air of ruthlessness.

The 32-year-old's also got that mix of sensuality and sinuousness (he used to play quarterback for Birmingham uni's American football team while he was studying there, so he can handle himself) which Bond demands, and he seems interested in parts which look at the empire and colonialism differently. It's a fresh angle to come at Bond – servant of the crown, member of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George – from.

As we found when we had a chat with him a couple of years back, around the time he got nominated for Bafta's Rising Star award, he did used to run around Luton as a kid pretending to be Indiana Jones. But let's not hold it against him.

Nicholas Hoult

Lovely Dev Patel isn’t the only first gen Skins alumnus who might be in the running to play Bond next. The even darker horse from this particular stable is Nicholas Hoult, the nose-tapping ITK choice to drop next time the conversation comes up.

Think about it. He’s 33. He can do the action stuff, as we saw when he was spraying chrome paint onto his teeth on Mad Max: Fury Road. He’s been in a couple of arty favourites in The Favourite and True History of the Kelly Gang. He’s a very different physical specimen to Daniel Craig, stringy and slightly elfin rather than butch and chunky, and that could be a bit of a draw to the Bond suits who’ll likely be keen to draw a line between the post-Bourne Bond years and whatever the new one turns into. The post-Marvel Bond years? The post-Avatar 2 Bond years? The post-F9 Bond years? Who knows.

And, perhaps as importantly, he seems like an actor in search of a real calling card role. There are no calling cards more gigantic than Bond, and you’d think that the wet thud with which Dark Phoenix ended the X-Men saga is just about far enough in the rear view mirror for Hoult to consider saddling up in a massive franchise again too. He’d make his own kind of history if he were to get the gig too – Hoult would be the first former child actor to play Bond.

The case against? There’s not a huge buzz about him, though that might just be because nobody’s put him in a tux for a photoshoot just yet. But give it a year or so, and he might just be in the picture.

Damson Idris

It’s hard to know what you’re going to get from an actor when you ask them The Big Bond Question. Some (Idris Elba, Tom Hardy et al) have clearly grown weary of it, while others try to maintain a 007-esque aloofness, mindful that Bond must never, under any circumstances, be played by an eager beaver. Conversely, there are actors (Henry Cavill, Sam Heughan) who make no secret of how much they really, really want the role, and speak about it openly with reverence. Then there are the ones who’ve clearly not thought about it that much, but… yeah, why the hell not? Sounds like a laugh.

When British actor Damson Idris was stopped on the red carpet for the season five premiere of US crime drama Snowfall in February 2023 (it’s good! Give it a watch!), Hip Hollywood put it to him that he’d make a perfect successor to Daniel Craig. He seemed excited by the thought.

“It is an iconic character, I will say that. I don’t know… do I look like I could play James Bond?” he said, showing off his black Prada suit. “You never know anything could happen… you heard it first Hip Hollywood: Bond is about to be Black.”

Is he already part of the conversation at 007 HQ? We wouldn’t be surprised. At 31 years old he’s a little young. But he’s handsome, British, and has won acclaim for his performances, but – importantly – isn’t too much of a mainstream draw just yet. The outside bet right now, maybe, but we expect that to change before too long.

Miles Teller

Despite being American, and not British, as we now know Broccoli wants, Teller’s name has recently been thrown into the hat. However, he may lose a little cool kudos as the campaign was started by… his own grandmother. Leona Flowers – which, sidebar, kind of sounds like an amazing Bond girl name – tweeted her preference for the new 007 and said: “He has everything they’re looking for — talent, looks, strength, worldwide appeal & oh, so cool. He can be that guy!!” She also added: “The folks in London loved him when he was just there with the premiere of Top Gun: Maverick. He even charmed William & Kate.”

She’s got a point. From his breakthrough role as a tortured drumming protege in 2013’s Whiplash, through to sci-fi action flicks like the Divergent series and Fantastic Four, and most recently, as Rooster in the box-office smash, Top Gun: Maverick, Teller has become known for his captivating screen presence and deep-level character studies for the roles he portrays.

We know what his family thinks about his Bond bid. But what does Teller think about it all? He vaguely told Entertainment Tonight about hypothetically taking on the role: “Yeah. I mean, yeah perfect, I think we're actors, you know, so maybe you can mix it up a little bit.”

But, there is still the pesky question of nationality. Barbara Broccoli has been clear that it's a role open only to Brits and Irishmen, perhaps still scarred by the Lazenby years. Still, Flowers has worked out a way around it. “He’s an actor, my dear.” she told a fan on Twitter. “He can do it… Lots of Europeans have played Americans. He studied acting which includes accents. He’d be great.” The one-woman campaign for his Oscar starts here!

Paapa Essiedu

In a chat with iconic British director Danny Boyle a little while ago, we talked about his doomed James Bond project. He signed up to oversee Bond 25 in February 2018 with his long-time screenwriting partner John Hodge, but it didn’t take long for the wheels to come off. They left the project in August of the same year over creative differences – reportedly over Boyle’s insistence that they kill off Bond, which we know now to be a heap of nonsense.

Boyle insisted that he wanted to do something a little different with the franchise, which he planned to set in modern-day Russia with flashbacks to Bond’s past, but that the producers weren’t willing to give him the freedom he needed. “They just lost confidence in it,” he told us. “It was a shame really.”

But Boyle still thinks the series has a bright future (even if he doesn’t see himself being involved in it), and he suggested two actors who could take over Daniel Craig in the role. One is Robert Pattinson – someone who has been suggested many times before – and the other is Paapa Essiedu, the award-winning actor from Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and Alex Garland’s Men. Boyle had seen him perform in the play A Number at the Old Vic a few days previously, and put him forward as a potential candidate.

Very cool, very handsome and, at 33, very young, Essiedu certainly ticks a lot of boxes. Essiedu’s acting chops (he's won acclaim for his performances on TV and as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company) will prove attractive to a team who pride themselves on not picking the most obvious option.

Aidan Turner

The former Ross Poldark keeps edging back to the top of the betting again after a couple of years drifting toward the back of the pack. What's interesting about this second – possibly third – wind is that it doesn't seem to be based on anything in particular. There's been no fresh interview with him where he laid out his yearning for Bond, no role announced that's basically a Bond audition by stealth.

Turner hasn't been exactly prolific since Poldark sheathed his scythe and popped its shirt back on – his last film was Love is Blind in 2019, and there was last year's starring role in a historical drama about Leonardo Da Vinci – but since rocking up the police thriller The Suspect things have got a bit more spicy again.

At 40, he's a teensy bit old, but he's absolutely able to look a million quid in some tailoring. He's playing Jesus in the Terrence Malick biopic The Way of the Wind, which could well end up being the heavyweight role that nudges him closer to the doors of MI6 too – Mark Rylance is playing Satan, after all.

There’s precedent for an Irish Bond in Pierce Brosnan, and of the mooted Irishmen who've been and gone in the running – Cillian Murphy and Michael Fassbender being the others – Turner’s the one with the best shot. All that said, though, there's not much of a sense of momentum here.

Tom Hopper

Some of you have already made the 'Tom Hopper? More like Tom Who-per!!' joke and it reflects more on you than it does on Tom Hopper. Hopper's highest profile role so far is as Luther Hargreeves in Netflix's The Umbrella Academy, though he also popped up in Game of Thrones as Dickon (stop it) Tarly for a few episodes. He's heard about the Bond speculation though.

"Yeah, I’ve heard that and that’s… that’s all I’ve heard," he told We Got This Covered while on the promo rounds for the new Resident Evil film. "I mean, any British actor will be lying if they say that James Bond wasn’t up there as a dream role. So, you know, it’s very nice to be in that conversation, you know, among betting websites."

Is he a genuine contender? Hard to say. At 38 he's still the right kind of age, clean cut, ripped to a frankly terrifying degree – but he's yet to have the breakout critical hit that a 21st century Bond probably needs. Just right now, we're going to err on the side of thinking he's right to invoke the bookies and will drift float back down the batting order when the next Brit hunk gets his day of headlines as the odds change again.

Dev Patel

Every profile of Dev Patel has to mention that we all remember him starting out as the lanky, awkward Anwar in Skins, so here that is. He has, obviously, become a lot more than that. Through Armando Iannucci's fresh, breezy reworking of The Personal History of David Copperfield and the grungy medieval epic The Green Knight – as well as Lion and Hotel Mumbai – he's positioned himself as one of Britain's most interesting and pliable leading men. At 33 he's the same age as Connery was when he was cast, he's dashing enough, and he's got a couple of action films under his belt as well as indie dramas. Then there's the action thriller Monkey Man, which he wrote, directed and starred in, which showcased some very Bond-ish fighting skills. Still, it does point to a more general leaning away from the kind of giant machine 007 represents. He's said as much in the past too: "I don't know what I would like to play," he admitted in a 2016 roundtable, "but I know what I'm afraid of playing: those big studio movies."

Then again, he was saying that about M Night Shyamalan's famously bobbins The Last Airbender, which would scar anyone.

Idris Elba

As we said up top, one of the great long-running cultural questions of our age has finally been answered. Idris Elba ain't gonna be Bond. We love him, you love him, the Bond hierarchy love him. But it's off the table. What will reporters blindside Idris with next time he's on a red carpet? Who knows. But it's definitely, definitively, not happening.

Luke Evans

If the Welshman were to follow fellow countryman Timothy Dalton into the DB5, he'd be in the running for the title of Most Outrageously Tonked Up James Bond Ever. He's solid and he can sell a quip with the best of them, but there are a few roadblocks in the way. He's 44, so probably a non-starter on age grounds anyway, and he's a little light on heavyweight character pieces – in fact, if we're being brutally honest, he's a bit light on good films in general over the last six or seven years. And, most of all, there must be some kind of Hollywood by-law barring anyone from the Fast and Furious saga appearing in Bond. Sound as he is, we're leaning towards a no for Evans.

Regé-Jean Page

At the beginning of April 2021 it was announced that British actor Regé-Jean Page would not be returning to Bridgerton, and social media did not react well to the news. In his role as the Duke of Hastings, Page inspired lustful Instagram pages and countless fawning articles, helping the period drama to become Netflix’s most successful series ever. At the time, everybody’s mind turned to one thing: Bond.

Odds were cut and the idea quickly gathered momentum, to the point that Page had to comment on the speculation that he's on the shortlist. In an interview with The Mirror, he said: "Ah, the B word. I think if you are British and do anything of note, that other people take notice of, then people will start talking about that.

"That's fairly normal and I'm flattered to be in the category of Brits that people have noticed. The concept of having plans in this moment in history is mildly hilarious. I've given up making them."

A measured, non-committal response that will only fuel rumours. Unlike some actors on this list who eagerly throw their hat into the ring at any opportunity, Regé-Jean Page understands that a true 007 candidate can’t appear to be too desperate for the role. At 34, he’s young enough to star in a Yung Bond reboot, as the franchise pivots away from Craig’s grizzled veteran. He’s also, in case you hadn’t noticed, stupidly handsome.

Having said that: even now he's 35, does he really have the requisite experience to take on such an iconic character? He's not getting involved, anyway. "It’s a conversation people are having, and it’s terribly flattering that they’re having it," he told Vanity Fair in February 2023. "I leave them to it."

Tom Holland

Twitter fandoms are a truly terrifying modern phenomenon. Celebs have whole armies at their disposal, ready and willing to do whatever it takes to land their fave a coveted role. These actors and singers may not even understand the power they possess – that they could conquer entire countries with a single tweet if they wanted to – but the stans do. In fact, these A-list loyalists know that they have the numbers, the time and the dedication to achieve whatever they want. Just ask Donald Trump.

Which brings us to Tom Holland, a man with one of the largest and most vocal fanbases on social media. The 27-year-old's name hasn’t been mentioned in the Bond debate very much, if at all, but we predict that will change very soon. Think about it: He’s handsome, he’s British, and he has leading man experience. The prospect of introducing Bond to a younger, Marvel-obsessed audience will be a tempting one, and the stans will put their full weight behind a casting campaign.

He's placed himself in the conversation on a couple of occasions too. "I mean, ultimately, as a young British lad who loves cinema, I'd love to be James Bond,” he told Variety in February 2021. “So, you know, I'm just putting that out there. I look pretty good in a suit. I'd be like a really short James Bond." And as we’ve mentioned previously, it’s probably time to get a Short King in the role (Daniel Craig, at 5 foot 10, is the shortest to take on the role so far).

Plus, back when he was filming his 2019 Spider-Man sequel, he pitched the idea of a young Bond reboot to studio execs. In the end, it didn’t work out.

"I had a meeting, after or during Spider-Man 2 [Far From Home], with Sony to pitch this idea of a young Bond film that I’d come up with," Holland told Total Film. "It was the origin story of James Bond. It didn’t really make sense. It didn’t work. It was the dream of a young kid, and I don’t think the Bond estate were particularly interested."

They may not be particularly interested in Tom this time either, given Michael G Wilson's comments about needing someone who looks like he's seen some shit. One for the future, perhaps.

Cillian Murphy

Now Peaky Blinders is all over and done with, Cillian Murphy is free to take on another time-consuming leading man role – and ideally one with less demanding grooming demands. The baker boy hat will weigh him down no longer. Although he might end up dragging a cartful of awards around with him from early next year, given how well his J Robert Oppenheimer has gone down.

Somewhat inevitably, Bond rumours have begun to swirl around the Irish actor again. He’s long been in the conversation and has addressed rumours in the past with the same non-committal good humour that most in-demand actors do. He’s proven that he can play a gun-toting hard man with the requisite pathos, and his critically-acclaimed work over the past two decades on indie and blockbuster films alike undoubtedly bolsters his cause. He might well be in line for an Oscar nom in February, and it goes without saying that he looks the part in a suit. What's not to like?

Well, he wouldn’t represent the kind of radical departure that some fans and critics are crying out for, and now he's a comparatively decrepit 47 years old he's pretty much guaranteed not to get it. Still: we love you Cills.

Tom Hardy

The number of times Tom Hardy's been 'announced' as James Bond is getting silly now, but despite him being (along with Idris) the people's choice, we can probably him to bed as a future Bond now we know it'll be a thirty-something actor.

It's easy to see why the Hardy angle persisted though. If you’ve got Pierce Brosnan’s backing – the former Bond said he fancied Hardy to "put a bit of wiggle into" Bond in 2018 – you’re halfway there, and Hardy has the brooding look, the magnetism and the maverick streak in spades.

Then again, it was never really on. As the kind of A-lister who makes other A-listers look like boring nerds, he doesn't need the role to elevate him any further, so Bond would be an odd fit. He might also be a bit wary of chucking himself into another big franchise so soon after Venom too, and Bond isn’t the kind of role you can just wander off from to do other things. Would've been nice to see a return of Bond's martial arts skills, given Hardy's jiu-jitsu prowess.

Robert Pattinson

Robert Pattinson's career has unfurled in three distinct stages: the tween heartthrob who broke a million hearts as a vampire with a tedious amount of self-control; the indie movie oddball who, at the behest of auteurs like Claire Denis and Robert Eggers, just kept masturbating on-screen; and now the star of blockbusters like Tenet and The Batman, in which he deftly brings that left-field sensibility to pure popcorn cinema.

Phase three Pattinson would make for a very interesting 007 indeed. We're not saying that the foppish spy he played in Tenet is definitely a James Bond audition tape. But we will point out he pulls off a double-breasted suit even better than Roger Moore.

Adding more intrigue, Christopher Nolan – who directed Tenet – is already being linked with Bond 26. The man who defined the sad superhero movie with The Dark Knight could take Bond in an even more tortured direction, which would suit Pattinson perfectly, and Nolan's got form when it comes to working with actors on multiple projects. Then again, he could just as easily draft in Michael Caine. There's probably some kind of law about not playing both Batman and Bond at the same time too. Don't cross the streams.

James Norton

The spate of BBC thrillers in the last few years has raised a certain echelon of British leading man toward the top of the Bond reckoning. Norton’s turn in McMafia shoved him to the head of the pack for a couple of months, and he’s certainly got the 'wearing of a suit' and 'waving of a gun' aspects of the role down. And following the finale of Happy Valley, in which he was the near-Terminator-ish bad lad Tommy Lee Royce, he's reminded everyone of his virtues and is back in the mix again.

He's taken to talking about Bond with a breezy nonchalance: "it’s lots of quite fun and bemusing media coverage," he told Variety in June 2023. "There’s nothing concrete behind it."

At 37 Norton's the right age, the right level of hotness, and it'd certainly be an elevation. Then again, he’s a bit light on film experience and might have been right to dismiss Bond rumours a couple of years ago as "very humbling speculation". He seemed to be the Clive Owen de nos jours.

But then again, is he? A small part in Greta Gerwig's Oscar-bothering Little Women and a much bigger part in the marquee BBC drama The Trial Of Christine Keeler suggest he still had the wind behind him as far as those in 'the biz' are concerned, though that wind may have blown itself out over the last two years.

"It's crazy. It's not real. It's speculative," Norton told the Sunday Times in January 2020. "There is no truth behind it. Unless journalists know something more than I do.”

They might well do. But how does it feel to be even considered in that world? What about beyond that? James? Jimmy?

"It's bizarre and quite flattering to be even considered in that world, but beyond that? Pure speculation."

Come come Mr Norton, you derive just as much pleasure from killing time with pure speculation as we do.

"It's really hard, as whatever I say can become a story," he went on. Very astute. Come on, stop stalling. Give us an answer. "I don't know how to answer."

Aha! The mask slips. He wants it. Norton is a go. Suspend the betting right this instant. #AnnounceNorton. James Norton Welcome To James Bond | Insane Skills | Goals | Assists HD.

Sam Heughan

A relatively recent entrant into the Bond race, you'll most likely recognise Heughan from Outlander and possibly from a role in Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon's comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me as a very Bond-y secret agent.

Perhaps as importantly, he's got the Connery factor. Heughan's from Balmaclellan in the Dumfries and Galloway, and he reckons it's time to cast Bond north of Hadrian's Wall again. We talked to him in June 2022 about the time he auditioned for Bond, before Craig had got the nod.

"It was such a strange experience, but I enjoyed it," he said. "I went in with a script and they were like: 'We might get you to read something from this scene' but they don’t tell you what it’s from. After that I was taken upstairs and I met Barbara Broccoli and Martin Campbell, the director at the time. There was a golden gun on the table – I guess from The Man With The Golden Gun? – and we sat around a very large wooden table and talked a bit about Bond. It was strange, as they didn’t want to talk about Bond, but they talked about Bond. It’s all very secret service."

He had no idea whether he was still in the Bond higher-ups' minds. "But I think the role’s fantastic and I’d love to throw my oversized hat into the ring again if they are! It’d be nice to see a Scottish Bond again."

The problem: he's 43 now, so pretty much definitively out of the picture regardless of how fascinating his character studies may be.

Jack Lowden

Another one from Scotland, the Borders-raised Lowden is only 33 and in the prime slot for a grooming into the next 007. The problem is, he doesn't really want it. Actually, that's not quite the truth. He just never wanted Craig to stop being Bond.

"Bond dealing with age is a brilliant idea and I think we should go the whole way until Daniel’s 85," he said in 2021. Fair enough – Lowden was 15 when Craig was cast. Has anyone checked on him since No Time To Die came out? Hope you're alright, buddy.

Lowden, though, might be a dark horse successor. He's got form in both heavyweight dramas (Denial, '71, Small Axe) and big action-y British films (Dunkirk) and think-y period pieces (Mary Queen of Scots, War & Peace). He's even been a beefed up bad lad with a heart of gold (Fighting With My Family).

He knows his way around a suit too. His Bond could well head take his tailoring in a very different direction to Craig's musclebound power-suits. We've been banging the drum for Lowden's suits for a while now, actually. The boy's got it all in his locker. Dismiss him at your peril.

Richard Madden

If suddenly staring very hard at something out of frame like a spaniel who's just caught scent of some fox poo two fields away is a key performance indicator for a Bond hopeful, then Bodyguard gave Madden ample opportunity to flaunt his suitability and pick up a Golden Globe while he was at it. The tough but conflicted but fragile but dutiful thing is solid Bond training, and Madden's silence on the subject feels more like a 'something is about to happen' kind of silence than a 'nothing is about to happen' void.

Then again though, there’s a lack of big screen heft beyond the underwhelming and possibly cursed CIA drama Bastille Day, which ended up being pulled from French cinemas after it opened following the terrorist attacks on Nice’s Bastille Day celebrations, and the deeply boring Eternals. Then there's Citadel. What to make of Citadel? All that money – $250 million! – all that hype, and it turns out nobody really watched it. It might have been just a touch to close to Bond, too: there needs to be an angle on the casting, rather than just Airdropping an action spy guy in.

As Craig's Bond has done the Bond-goes-Bourne thing so long that Bourne-style gritty clobbering has become the norm for most action films, and certainly most spy films, Madden’s blank terseness might represent a step back to 2005 rather than a step forward.

Riz Ahmed

Everyone likes Riz. He's a brilliant actor, as you know from Nightcrawler, Four Lions and The Night Of. Had Ahmed been in the running in 2005, he might have been considered just a bit too interesting and outspoken for the part, but whether it's on Twitter or via his music with Swet Shop Boys or as Riz MC, he's always been an intelligent and considered voice in conversations about representation in TV and film and as such would be exactly the right guy to play the first Bond of colour. If anyone could show that Bond can move with the times and, if necessary, sit down the kind of baby-men who'd freak out at the idea of a Muslim Bond with a combo of grace and righteous force, he can.

Daniel Kaluuya

For some reason, nobody's really talking about Kaluuya as an outside shout for Bond at the minute, but all the ingredients are there. Between Sicario, Black Panther, Widows and Get Out, he's got both critical clout and action chops, as well as being exactly the kind of famous-but-not-mega-mega-famous actor who generally gets the gig. When the idea of being Bond was put to him by the Hollywood Reporter he dodged it admirably: "What are the odds on that? I need to know the odds first, 'cause I need a new kitchen." For the record, Daniel, your odds are sliding between 6-1 and 20-1, but we'd price him a lot shorter than that.

Henry Cavill

Cavill’s name has been bouncing around Bond for more than a decade: he was Casino Royale director Martin Campbell’s pick to succeed Pierce Brosnan, but he lost out to Daniel Craig as he was considered too young at 23. He even missed out on a chance of a role in 300 because he was so focussed on getting the Bond gig.

He's old enough now, but prospective Bonds are meant to have a winking, chase-me-chase-me coyness when anyone asks them about being Bond. Cavill hasn’t got that memo. "I would love the opportunity and if they were to ask, I would say yes," he said breathlessly in 2018, sounding more like a slightly anxious Duke of Edinburgh candidate who really needs this Oxfam stock assistant gig than a devil-may-care superspy.

He addressed rumours again with the Sunday Times in January 2021, saying: "Time will tell. You don’t know which direction they want to take Bond in and so I like to say that everything’s always on the table." Now he's out of Superman's cape and The Witcher's big orange eyes, he'll certainly have the time.

John Boyega

Boyega did a Google Assistant ad which toyed with the idea of him playing Bond – he's in a tux, does the classic pre-credits Bond crouch-and-gun-point pose, and likes what he sees so much he calls his agent – and managed to come across as both a laugh and a real contender to take Bond and make him funny, dashing and buoyant.

Over the last decade Bond has reorientated to make itself a quietly progressive force, firstly casting Jeffrey Wright as CIA agent Felix Leiter, and then bringing Naomie Harris' Eve Moneypenny out of her former life spent in M's anteroom watching Bond throw his hat across the room, and sending her into the field.

Lashana Lynch's introduction as Nomi was the next step, and it would make sense if Boyega joined as Bond himself to become the final phase of that long change.

Harris Dickinson

At 27, Harris Dickinson would be another young pick for Bond. But what a pick he would be! He’s handsome enough, obviously, but also a little bit weird. Take his performance as a beleaguered male model in Ruben Östlund’s gross-out satire Triangle of Sadness: the perfect mix of golden retriever charm and buffoonery. His ever-so-slightly sad boy sensibilities – see British indie Scrapper and 2017’s melancholy coming-of-age flick Beach Rats – would lend some Craig-style depth to the spy. Given the East London actor’s pleasingly weird CV, it’s no surprise he’s not a leading man yet, and that just means he’d be able to make Bond his own.

What are his chances? He’s already starred in 007-adjacent The King’s Man. He looks good in a suit. And, he seems (sort of) game. He recently told The Evening Standard: “Bond would be sick, I’d definitely entertain Bond, but it also just feels like such a notorious thing that everyone gets asked about if you’re British and male.” Would he be the first Bond actor to call his casting “sick”? Probably! A modern man, indeed.