<P> With the retirement of Roger Moore in 1985, a search for a new actor to play Bond took place that saw a number of actors, including Sam Neill, Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton audition for the role in 1986 . Bond co-producer Michael G. Wilson, director John Glen, Dana and Barbara Broccoli "were impressed with Sam Neill and very much wanted to use him", although Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli was not sold on the actor . Dalton and Brosnan were both considered by Eon, but after Brosnan was eventually ruled out by his Remington Steele contract, Dalton was appointed in August 1986 on a salary of $5.2 million . When he was either 24 or 25 years old Dalton had discussed playing Bond with Broccoli, but decided he was too young to accept the role, thinking Bond should be played between 35 and 40 years old . In preparing for the role, Dalton, a green - eyed, dark haired, slender, 6'2" (1 m 88 cm) classically trained Shakespearean actor, was keen to portray the character as accurately as possible, reading up extensively on the books before his role in The Living Daylights (1987). </P> <P> Dalton's Bond was a serious one: dark, cold, emotional, stern, ruthless, showing little humour, and focused as a killer with little time for fun and indulgence . Dalton's interpretation of the character came from his "desire to see a darker Bond", one that was "less of a womaniser, tougher and closer to the darker character Ian Fleming wrote about". James Chapman also considered Dalton to be closer to Fleming's Bond than the previous actors, writing that Dalton was "clearly less comfortable...with the witty asides and one - liners...so he becomes something closer to the Bond of the books, who rarely develops a sense of humour". When reviewing Licence to Kill, Iain Johnstone of The Sunday Times disagreed, declaring that "any vestiges of the gentleman spy...by Ian Fleming" have now gone; he went on to say that "this character is remarkably close both in deed and action to the eponymous hero of the new Batman film". </P> <P> Not all viewers were taken with Dalton . Jay Scott of The Globe and Mail was entirely dismissive . "The new Bond has been widely described in feature stories as a throwback to the Ian Fleming original (studying the Fleming novels, Dalton was pleased to discover that Bond was a human being, he says), and that may be true, if the Fleming original lacked charm, sex appeal and wit . Timothy Dalton's Bond is a serious bloke who swallows his words and approaches his job with responsibility and humanity, and eschews promiscuity--Dirtless Harry . You get the feeling that on his off nights, he might curl up with the Reader's Digest and catch an episode of Moonlighting--he'd try to memorize the jokes--before nodding off under the influence of Ovaltine . The British reviews of The Living Daylights have been laudatory, perhaps because this Bond is the most British of all, if British is to be understood as a synonym for reserved". </P> <P> Raymond Benson noted that Dalton "purposely played Bond as a ruthless and serious man with very little of the wit displayed by Connery, Lazenby or Moore", and considered him to be "the most accurate and literal interpretation of the role...ever seen on screen". His character also reflected a degree of moral ambiguity; in Licence to Kill, for instance, he becomes a rogue agent, while Dalton himself saw the character as a "man, not a superhuman; a man who is beset with moral confusions and apathies and uncertainties, and who is often very frightened and nervous and tense". Smith and Lavington observed that during Dalton's portrayal in Licence to Kill, Bond appeared "self - absorbed...reckless, brutal, prone to nervous laughter and...probably insane, or at least seriously disturbed . In the light of Licence to Kill, one academic, Martin Willis, referred to Dalton's Bond as a "muscular vigilante". Steven Jay Rubin noted that Dalton's films had "a hard - edged reality and some unflinching violent episodes that were better suited to Dalton's more realistic approach to the character". Rubin considered Dalton's portrayal to be "Fleming's Bond...the suffering Bond". In contrast to the previous incarnations of the character, Smith and Lavington identified Dalton's humour as "brooding rather than flippant"; combined with his heavy smoking, they considered him "an effective leading man". Eoghan Lyng, writing for The James Bond Dossier, favourably compared him to Daniel Craig, stating that "Despite chronological placement, it was Dalton, not Brosnan, who proved to be the prototype for the 21st century Bond .". Although Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum called Sean Connery the best Bond, he considered Dalton the best actor of the four he worked with . His predecessor, Roger Moore also felt that Dalton was the best actor to play Bond . </P>

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