Sean Connery Made Two Demands Before Agreeing To Become The First James Bond

Despite the many other actors who were considered for the part, Connery ultimately became their guy. The rest is history. Broccoli, who along with Harry Saltzman largely made the “James Bond” movies what they were in those early days, understood that getting a capable yet relatively unknown actor for Bond was key. “If the books were successful, they would make whoever played Bond famous,” Broccoli explains in the book. “A star couldn’t have been tied up for a series of pictures; and we felt this to be vital.”

That took already famous, perhaps more bankable stars off the table. But it didn’t matter: “Dr. No” became a smash success, taking in $59.5 million worldwide against a $1 million budget. (For context, in today’s dollars, we’re talking about a movie making nearly ten times that amount.) That set up Connery for a run that would also include “From Russia With Love,” “Goldfinger,” “Thunderball,” “You Only Live Twice,” “Diamonds Are Forever” and, later, in an unofficial capacity, “Never Say Never Again.”

Perhaps more importantly, the film’s success carved a path for cinema’s most enduring franchise, which has now spanned 60 years and six actors across 25 films. Connery is owed a great deal of credit for his part in all of it. In the book, associate producer Stanley Sopel may have said it best in explaining that they knew from day one that Connery was going to be their James Bond:

“He didn’t look like anybody’s idea of Bond when we first saw him but there was something there. We did go through the motions of screen-testing some fifteen or twenty hopefuls, of everybody’s idea of what Commander Bond should look like: 6’2″, British upper-crust, with the sort of chiseled face. Had a genius come out of that testing, Connery probably wouldn’t have gotten the part, but he was it from the beginning.”