So Daniel Craig has now
said that he is reserving the right to change his mind about whether
he wants to do another Bond movie.
But those comments he
made about wanting to ‘slash his wrists’ rather than reprise 007 –
made while exhausted from an eight month shoot – recall how another
Bond sabotaged his own career.
In 1968, George Lazenby
had the world at his feet.
By chance, he’d met
James Bond producer Albert 'Cubby’ Broccoli in a barber shop, and had
landed himself an audition to take over from Sean Connery in 'On Her
Majesty’s Secret Service’.
Though he wasn’t an
actor – the Australian-born star was a model at the time – it was
thought that he had the swagger to carry off Fleming’s globe-trotting
spy.
During a screen test,
where he accidentally punched a stuntman in the face, Broccoli saw
potential, and against all odds, he scored the job.
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Peter Hunt, who was
lined up as the director of the follow up to 1967’s 'You Only Live
Twice’, Connery’s last appearance as Bond, seemed to agree that his
lack of acting experience didn’t matter.
He told the Washington
Post: “We wanted someone who oozed sexual assurance, and we think
this fellow has that. Just wait till the women see him on screen… I
am not saying he is an actor. There is a great deal of difference
between an actor and a film star. Didn’t they find Gary Cooper when
he was an electrician?”
But it would be a rocky
road ahead.
He ended up clashing
with Hunt, not to mention his co-stars Diana Rigg and the
mild-mannered Desmond Llewelyn, who played Q in 17 of the Bond
movies.
He says that the
filmmakers ignored him, and refused to listen to his ideas.
Rigg, rather
witheringly, told the Canberra Times: “I can no longer cater for
his obsession with himself. He is utterly, unbelievably … bloody
impossible.”
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Though he was offered a
contract, said to be worth $1 million, to make six more movies, he
turned Broccoli down, before 'OHMSS’ had even hit cinemas.
Petulantly, he grew his
hair long and a beard as if to further distance himself from the
role.
“I much prefer being
a car salesman to a stereotyped James Bond,” he said at the time.
“My parents think I’m insane, everybody thinks I’m insane passing
up maybe millions of pounds. Nobody believed me. They thought it was
a publicity stunt. But it’s just me doing my own thing.”
He branded Bond 'a
brute’, and had been persuaded by his manager that Bond would soon be
old hat, with counter culture movies like 'Easy Rider’ and the
changing attitudes of the 70s becoming increasingly fashionable.
But his career floundered
after Bond, and he never managed to make good on that big break. In
1978, he was reduced to offering his acting services in an advert he
took out himself in Variety magazine.
Instead of the Bond
series, he instead starred in the b-movie erotica series 'Emmanuelle’,
appearing in eight of the movies through the 90s.
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In a tragic twist, though 'On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ was not critically
lauded at the time, it has since become a classic in the Bond canon.
Equally, despite
walking away from the role, Lazenby still does the Bond circuit,
making personal appearances.
He told the Los Angeles
Times: “It hasn’t been easy, trying to climb back… I admit I
acted stupidly. It went to my head, everything that was happening to
me. But remember, it was my first film.
“Now what I’ve got to
do is live down my past; convince people I’m not the same person who
made a fool of himself all those years ago. I know I can do it. All I
need is the chance.”
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