Why Tim­o­thy Dal­ton is the best James Bond actor

James Bond’s sil­ver anniver­sary in 1987 marked a moment of uncer­tain­ty for the fran­chise. Roger Moore had depart­ed after 12 years and sev­en films, and 007 was fac­ing com­pe­ti­tion from a new wave of brawny Amer­i­can action heroes. It was time for the gen­tle­man spy to shift gears. So when Tim­o­thy Dal­ton was hand­ed his licence to kill, he insist­ed that he would aban­don the fan­ta­sy of the Moore era and bring the char­ac­ter back down to earth. ​“First and fore­most,” he said, ​“I want­ed to make him human. He’s not a super­man – you can’t iden­ti­fy with a superman.”

Dal­ton set about read­ing all of Ian Fleming’s orig­i­nal nov­els and immers­ing him­self in the dark­ly con­flict­ed char­ac­ter of the lit­er­ary Bond. ​“What makes these movies work?” he lat­er reflect­ed. ​“You’ve got to go back to the begin­ning. Here was a hero who mur­dered in cold blood… The dirt­i­est, tough­est, mean­est, nas­ti­est, bru­tal­ist hero we’ve ever seen. This is what start­ed these movies. I want­ed to bring peo­ple back to believ­ing in this char­ac­ter, to bring my real­i­ty to it.”

This more cyn­i­cal, prag­mat­ic Bond was arguably the most rad­i­cal depar­ture for the series since its incep­tion. It remains a thrilling­ly bold inter­pre­ta­tion – per­haps, dare one say it, the best. Dalton’s time in the icon­ic din­ner jack­et may have been lim­it­ed to just two films, but he cre­at­ed the tem­plate for Daniel Craig’s laud­ed 21^st cen­tu­ry Bond.

From the open­ing sal­vo of 1987’s The Liv­ing Day­lights there is a sin­gu­lar inten­si­ty to Dalton’s pres­ence. When Bond dis­obeys an order to shoot a beau­ti­ful female sniper, the dis­taste with which he regards his grim pro­fes­sion is pal­pa­ble. ​“Go ahead, tell M if you want,” Bond spits to his offi­cious col­league. ​“If he fires me, I’ll thank him for it.”

The plot is like­wise stripped back from the out­landish schemes typ­i­cal­ly hatched by Bond vil­lains, instead revolv­ing around a com­plex arms-deal­ing con­spir­a­cy root­ed in a Rea­gan­ite milieu. The third act, in which Bond jour­neys to Afghanistan and fights along­side the Mujahideen against Sovi­et occu­piers, reflects an engage­ment with Cold War geopol­i­tics rarely found in a series that has tra­di­tion­al­ly favoured apo­lit­i­cal supervillains.

The emo­tion­al stakes were height­ened in 1989’s Licence to Kill, with Michael G Wil­son and Richard Maibaum tai­lor­ing their caus­tic script to Dalton’s strengths. As Bond goes rogue on a shock­ing­ly vio­lent quest for revenge, he is forced to rely large­ly on his wits to bring down drug lord Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) – and he does so with vis­cous con­vic­tion. Amid this cycle of bru­tal­i­ty, the line between Bond and his ene­mies becomes ever more blurred. As Dal­ton him­self remarked dur­ing film­ing, ​“He’s just as bad [as the vil­lains], he’s a mur­der­er – a cold, cru­el, ruth­less killer. He just hap­pens to be work­ing for the side that’s called good.”

Dalton’s clear grasp of his char­ac­ter is a point of admi­ra­tion for jour­nal­ist, broad­cast­er and Bond fan Sami­ra Ahmed. ​“I think Dalton’s strength is that he imbues Bond with the inten­si­ty of a Shake­speare­an actor and had a clear vision for his look – navy and neu­tral chi­nos – no Mia­mi Vice pas­tels in Licence to Kill,” she tells LWLies. ​“His anger feels real, and con­se­quent­ly so does his sur­prise and his joy.”

Dalton’s Bond might be a mean bas­tard, but that’s not to say he is entire­ly dour. There’s a ten­der­ness and a sense of refine­ment at his core that seems at odds with his pen­chant for vio­lence. It’s a con­tra­dic­tion torn from the pages of Flem­ing, deep­en­ing Bond’s human­i­ty and, cru­cial­ly, adding cred­i­bil­i­ty to his romances. The affec­tion between Bond and Maryam D’Abo’s Kara Milovy in The Liv­ing Day­lights feels almost unique­ly gen­uine. As Ahmed notes, ​“He’s the only one who could say ​‘it was exquis­ite’ when telling Kara about her musi­cal per­for­mance, and it sounds con­vinc­ing. This is a Bond who’s gen­uine­ly cul­tured, rather than wear­ing it as a badge.”

The real­is­tic tone of the Dal­ton era didn’t come at the expense of spec­ta­cle. Indeed, both The Liv­ing Day­lights and Licence to Kill con­tain some of the finest action set-pieces in the entire series. An aer­i­al stunt in the latter’s pre-title sequence, in which one air­craft is sus­pend­ed by anoth­er in mid-air, was notably bor­rowed by Christo­pher Nolan for the open­ing of his 2012 film The Dark Knight Ris­es. Dalton’s com­mit­ment to authen­tic­i­ty led him to per­form many of his own stunts. ​“The audi­ence should quite sim­ply believe that the man, the char­ac­ter they’re watch­ing, James Bond, does them,” he argued.

For Dr Lisa Fun­nel, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa and author of ​‘Geo­gra­phies, Gen­ders, and Geopol­i­tics of James Bond’, the blend of emo­tion­al authen­tic­i­ty and visu­al excite­ment with­in the Dal­ton films makes them an ide­al start­ing point. ​“He offers the best fusion of the core qual­i­ties that define oth­er James Bond actors. This is one of the rea­sons why The Liv­ing Day­lights serves as a great gate­way film into the franchise.”

Although Dalton’s 007 may have delight­ed Flem­ing purists, he did not set the box office alight, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the US where the sharply-dressed Bond had been eclipsed by the bulging tor­sos of Schwarzeneg­ger and Stal­lone. Fresh legal wran­gling over Bond’s cin­e­mat­ic rights fur­ther scup­pered Dalton’s tenure, forc­ing the fran­chise into an unprece­dent­ed hia­tus. When a new Bond final­ly emerged six years lat­er in the form of Pierce Bros­nan, the series chart­ed a course back to larg­er-than-life escapism.

It was only with the intro­duc­tion of Craig’s hard­er-edged Bond in 2006 that Dalton’s brief stint began to feel ahead of its time. As John Rain, host of the James Bond pod­cast ​‘Smersh Pod’ and author of ​‘Thun­der­book: The World of Bond Accord­ing to Smersh Pod’, observes, ​“While Dal­ton hand­ed out head­butts in 1987, you can’t help but be remind­ed of the wise words of Mar­ty McFly: ​‘I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it.’”

Bring­ing the ​‘blunt instru­ment’ of Fleming’s nov­els to the screen for the first time, Dal­ton rein­vent­ed what a Bond film could be. As Craig hol­sters his Walther PPK for the final time in No Time to Die, it’s worth remem­ber­ing that he stands on the shoul­ders of a giant.