Before Sean Connery in 1962, “Valley of the Dolls” Actress Was Almost Cast as Female James Bond, Book Claims

Author Ian Fleming also called Sean Connery a "roughneck," according to a new biography

Decades before Lashana Lynch was 007 in No Time to Die, there was reportedly an idea to cast a woman as James Bond, a new biography on author Ian Fleming claims.

In Nicholas Shakespeare’s Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, the author writes that Gregory Ratoff considered Oscar-winner Susan Hayward for the part of Bond. Ratoff had tried to make a film adaptation of Casino Royale during the 1950s.

“Since the mid-1950s, many well-known actors had been approached,” Shakespeare wrote, reports IndieWire. “Gregory Ratoff had the arresting idea of having Bond played by a woman, Susan Hayward.”

Related: Pierce Brosnan Reacts to Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Rumored Casting as James Bond: He 'Has the Chops' to Play Him

Screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr., who was hired to write a script for Ratoff, told Variety in 2012 the two considered making Bond a woman.

“Frankly, we thought he was kind of unbelievable and as I recall, even kind of stupid,” Semple told Variety. “So Gregory thought the solution was to make Bond a woman, ‘Jane Bond’ if you will, and he even had a plan to cast Susan Hayward in the role.”

Hayward won an Oscar for playing death row inmate Barbara Graham in 1958’s I Want to Live!. She earned four other Oscar nominations during a career that began in the late 1930s and ended in 1972. Among her best-remembered films is 1967's Valley of the Dolls, in which she played a Broadway diva afraid of being upstaged by Patty Duke’s younger actress. She died in 1975 at age 57.

Fleming’s top choice to play Bond was Richard Burton, who turned down the role, reports Variety. According to Shakespeare’s book, Peter Finch, Trevor Howard, Cary Grant, Dick Bogarde, Rex Harrison, Richard Todd, Michael Redgrave, Patrick McGoohan and Richard Johnson were also considered for the part. Roger Moore, who would eventually play Bond in seven films, was also on the list.

“We tried 20 or 30. No major actor would play the part for more than one picture and we couldn’t set up a deal with a distributor without commitment from a main actor,” Fleming’s film agent Robert Fenn told Shakespeare for the book.

Related: Aaron Taylor-Johnson Rumored to Have Been Offered Role as Next James Bond

Sean Connery became the first big-screen Bond with 1962’s Dr. No. Fleming was reportedly “shocked” when he met the Scottish actor “because [Connery] couldn’t speak the Queen’s English,” Fenn recalled to Shakespeare, per Variety.

“Fleming said, ‘He’s not my idea of Bond at all, I just want an elegant man, not this roughneck,’ ” Fenn told Shakespeare.

Connery played Bond in five more films from Eon Productions and one more time in the non-Eon movie Never Say Never Again in 1983. Aside from Connery and Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig have all played the suave spy who takes his martinis shaken, not stirred.

Ian Fleming: The Complete Man will be published by HarperCollins on April 9.

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