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Sean Connery named best ever Bond in new poll

Sean Connery - United Artists/Getty Images
Sean Connery - United Artists/Getty Images

With his Scottish burr and impeccable styling, Sir Sean Connery was always going to be a hard act to follow as James Bond.

And so it has proved with a survey of 14,000 fans carried out by RadioTimes.com, which has picked the actor as the best incarnation of the iconic spy.

Roger Moore - Moviepix/Silver Screen Collection 
Roger Moore - Moviepix/Silver Screen Collection

The results are likely to stoke the long-running debate among 007 devotees as to which actor is the greatest, with, perhaps controversially, neither Daniel Craig nor Sir Roger Moore ending up in the top three.

Unfortunately for Craig, the current Bond, having starred in the films since Casino Royale in 2006, he found himself pitted against Connery in round one. Although Craig is more familiar to younger people, Sir Sean was the clear winner, securing 56 per cent of the vote, against Craig’s 44 per cent.

The appeal of Sir Sean, who made his debut as 007 in 1962 in Dr No, has shown no sign of waning over the past decades, having set the benchmark in From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever.

Craig’s predecessor, Irish actor Pierce Brosnan, who appeared in four Bond films, was pitted against George Lazenby, who portrayed 007 once – in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969.

It was no contest, with Brosnan taking 76 per cent of the vote. Bizarrely, even though fans thought little of Lazenby himself, his film is highly rated, picked as the best ever Bond film by readers of 007 Magazine.

Daniel Craig - Film Stills
Daniel Craig - Film Stills

In the final knockout round, Sir Roger, who was already known to millions of fans from The Saint before his outings as Bond, lost out to Timothy Dalton.

The poll was run as a tournament, with the six Bond actors split into pairs to face off in three rounds, with the winners of each round then pitted against each other in a final vote.

It is not clear how the pairs were chosen, which may lead to accusations that some of the actors were hard done by.

The survey’s result flies in the face of a previous poll, carried out by YouGov, which placed Sir Roger in third place behind Sir Sean and Craig and well ahead of Dalton.

In the run-off, Sir Sean’s status was underlined when he secured 44 per cent of the vote. Dalton scored 32 per cent and Brosnan 23 per cent.

“It does not surprise me that Connery is seen as the best Bond of all time,” said Christoph Lindner, a cultural theorist and a professor at University College London.

Timothy Dalton - Keith Hamshere/Moviepix
Timothy Dalton - Keith Hamshere/Moviepix

“After all, he was the original screen Bond and his films belong to a golden age in Sixties cinema that evokes a lot of nostalgia.

“My view, however, is that Daniel Craig is the best Bond. Why? One reason is that he is closest to the flawed, conflicted, and occasionally inept 007 of Ian Fleming’s novels.

But a better reason is that the films of the Craig era deliver a vision of Bond that is far darker and more narratively complex than anything that has come before.”

Pierce Brosnan - Film Stills
Pierce Brosnan - Film Stills

Colin Gardner, professor of critical theory and integrated studies at the University of California in Santa Barbara, said: “It’s a generational thing. For people who never saw Connery, Moore was the best.”