Being younger than James Bond, then the same age, then older


Time-travel with me and let's watch the very first James Bond movie I'd ever seen, Live and Let Die. I'm fifteen, and as I watched the character on the screen blowing things up, making love to beautiful women, etc., I really had no idea how old he was supposed to be. Obviously he wasn't high school age, and he wasn't old and decrepit, so I did some research, and discovered that, in the books at least, he's between 35 and 40. His "License to Kill" would be automatically taken away on his 40th birthday, so I knew he was under forty, and according to my mom a man really isn't fully mature until 35. Made sense to me!

This is a double-feature, by the way, and after "Live and Let Die", we're watching "Diamonds are Forever", which is the first time that I saw Sean Connery. I did become a Connery fan after that, but not there and then - Sean was 40 when he made that movie, and really not convincing, even to me. He looked old and decrepit! Roger Moore, who was actually a couple of years older than Connery, did look the part, playing 35-40 at age 42.

Skipping ahead to the 1980s, I'm in my twenties, and becoming more and more aware of age. Roger Moore and Sean Connery and now WAY too old to play a character who is supposed to be 35-40, but that doesn't stop them.

By the '90s, I'm in my thirties and am the right age to play James Bond. And they were right, I'm at my prime at that age, young enough that I could stay up all night at a casino, but old enough to be responsible enough to assassinate the correct target in Istanbul. I'm not as tall as Pierce Brosnan, nor as Irish, but we have similar builds, and hairlines. For a long time I could go get a haircut and just say "the same style as Pierce Brosnan", and they knew. I was pleased when they brought in a younger actor, after suffering with "geriatric James Bonds" for so long in the '80s. By the way, I liked Timothy Dalton, too.

It's 1998, and it's time for me to admit it, I'm too old to be James Bond. Pierce Brosnan was also aging, and when he leaves, in 2002, the franchise seems to be stuck. Now it's 2006, and I'm WAAAAY too old to play James Bond, but Daniel Craig does it with style.

It's September of 2021 as I write this, and I'm looking forward to the next actor. I'm getting older, but James Bond shouldn't.

When you were young
And your heart was an open book,
You used to say live and let live.
But if this ever changing world in which we're living
Makes you give in and cry
Say live and let die!
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