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Timothy Dalton
- Timothy Dalton to Corrina Honan of the "Daily Mail." "Dalton was an Ian Fleming purist who was frequently surrounded by Bond novels on set, and who deliberately reconnected the franchise with its tough and often unflattering source material. Despite the spin that has emerged in recent years from Team Bond, especially Daniel Craig's Bond, about going back to Fleming for inspiration ('It's all about reading the books,' said Craig, possibly tongue in cheek) no one can touch Dalton for genuine authenticity. Craig's Bond, for better or worse, is merely the incarnation of an interview that Fleming gave to the New Yorker in 1962, in which he nervously referred to Bond as 'a blunt instrument' (Judi Dench's M uses the line in Casino Royale). The new, rebooted franchise has thus taken this trope at its most literal and transformed its Bond into a beefy no-neck killing machine with a capacity for moments of tenderness and reflection, but who's happier punching, kicking and thwacking, and running straight through plasterboard walls. Similarly, Pierce Brosnan's Bond was deeply indebted to the camp theatrics of Sir Roger Moore's Bond, which was a reaction, in turn, to Sir Sean Connery's grittier Bond which, when you think about it, wasn't that gritty at all (Little Nellie, the rocket-firing autogyro from You Only Live Twice; the Aston Martin with the ejector seat in Goldfinger; Connery quipping, 'She had her kicks!' ... as Rosa Klebb is shot after she attempts to kill him with a blade attached to her." "I don't know why we chose scenes from that particular Bond picture (On Her Majesty's Secret Service), but Timothy showed he had every quality we were looking for to take over the role. the other thing that impressed me was his incredible and believable likeness to the Bond character. When we studied the screen test every one of us believed he could have been a former commander in the British Navy. He behaved as though he had the ability to be a spy and he looked as though he wouldn't think twice about killing somebody cooly and cleanly. It was a pretty impressive screen test."
- Timothy Dalton. "The differences between James Bond and myself are extreme. It's strange, because, as an actor, I must look for common identities in order to express Bond through me - but it isn't easy. Obviously, I don't know what it's like to be a secret agent, and I'm certainly not licensed to kill. And I don't know if I would want to be licensed to kill. Well, you never know, do you? There are odd times when it has flashed across my mind." "Timothy Dalton has Shakespearean training, but he underestimated the role. The character has to be graceful and move well and have a certain measure of charm as well as be dangerous." "The thing is I think Timothy Dalton was great in the part but I think they tried to change it in the wrong direction and he got the rap for it." "There's a beautiful moment at the end of Licence To Kill, the second and final of the short-lived Timothy Dalton Bond movies. After fleeing an exploding New Age meditation temple in a devastating four-rig truck chase, tumbling to the ground and setting fire to a petrol-soaked drug lord (Robert Davi), Dalton's 007 finally allows himself a breather. Smoke-blackened and scarred, he surveys the wreckage around him with a melancholic sigh. And then suddenly, and briefly, he shifts forwards and does a strangulated dry-retch. And that's when you get it. That's when, after umpteen glamorous, far-flung and babe-filled assignments, it finally hits home. James Bond's job makes him want to puke."
- Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum. "Timothy Dalton can have the role as long as he enjoys it. He makes an effective Bond -- lacking Sean Connery's grace and humor and Roger Moore's suave self-mockery, but with a lean tension and a toughness that is possibly more contemporary. The major difference between Dalton and the earlier Bonds is that he seems to prefer action to sex. But then so do movie audiences, these days." "Everybody knows what kind of James Bond they want. Half the world loves Sean Connery and the other half loves Roger Moore... And you know that they might all get together and hate you." "Last year (1996), I went up to the frozen north of Canada to do a documentary on wolves. I stepped off the plane and all these wonderful Inuit people in parkas started chanting James Bond." "Dalton is a powerhouse performer. The RADA-trained actor can do drugged with dignity ('I... Er. I... Chloral hydrate!'), while he's positively buoyant in some of his lighter scenes: 'Are you calling me a horse's arse?' he chuckles at Kara. Equally, because of this sensitivity, the moments when he suddenly has to 'become' the killer, are all the more shocking. 'Get down on your knees. Put your hands behind your back,' he says coldly to John Rhys-Davies' Russian general Pushkin, in an execution scene that might have been perfunctory for every other Bond, but here seems brutal and bleakly life defining. And maybe that's the key to Dalton's Bond, and the reason why he drove it into the ground after just two instalments. Because the best moments of the modern movie Bonds show a professional agent trying to find his humanity in the midst of violence. Yet Dalton's portrait, just like Fleming's, was that of a man who is not finding his humanity, but losing it."
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