Refusing to embody James Bond is possible. This well-known actor has proven it in the past and bitterly regrets it today.
For many actors, embodying James Bond is a real dream. While we do not yet know Daniel Craig’s successor, several actors have expressed their desire to play the British secret agent with a license to kill. Others have also tried their luck in the past, without success. But there is a very small list of actors who have politely refused to play this role of a lifetime, which revealed to the general public comedians like Sean Connery or Roger Moore.
This is the case of an actor very well known to moviegoers. In 2006 Hugh Jackman was invited to audition for the role in ‘Casino Royale’. An audition that he nevertheless refused. And he is not far from having simply snubbed the famous spy. He explained that he did not want to lock himself into a single role, when he was already, in the eyes of the public, the unforgettable Wolverine. With Variety in 2007, he also delivered his concern about being overwhelmed: “between James Bond and Wolverine, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else.”
Eventually, Hugh Jackman missed out on a huge role and a big check. With the Sun in 2012, he even admitted that seeing Daniel Craig in the film gave him some slight regrets. “I said to myself that I should have been more interested in it, because it was great,” he confided a little sheepishly. For the anecdote, Hugh Jackman is not the only one to have declined the role of James Bond, since, before him, Liam Neeson had declined the costume of the secret agent after the Timothy Dalton era.