Dame Helen Mirren has said that although she is “such a feminist” she believes the next actor to play James Bond must be male in order for the film franchise to “work” in its current form.
The 80-year-old star of The Queen, who is set to appear alongside former 007 actor Pierce Brosnan in the forthcoming adaptation of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club, said Bond “has to be a guy”.
“You can’t have a woman,” she told Saga Magazine. “James Bond has to be James Bond, otherwise it becomes something else.”
Pierce, 72, who starred as Bond in four films – GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough, and Die Another Day – agreed with Mirren that then next Bond “has to be a man”.
He said: “I’m so excited to see the next man come on the stage and to see a whole new exuberance and life for this character.
“I adore the world of James Bond. It’s been very good to me. It’s the gift that keeps giving. And I’m just a member of the audience now, sitting back, saying: ‘Show us what you’re going to do.’”
In 2017, Mirren defended the idea that the next James Bond could be played by a female actor, after Halle Berry admitted she didn’t think the role should ever be taken on by a woman.
When asked if she’d take on the character herself, Mirren told The Telegraph: “I’m too old. In my youth, that would have been great, of course. But that time was different; we could never even have imagined a woman playing that role.”
Mirren’s latest verdict comes after she she called out the James Bond franchise for its “profound sexism” in March.
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“I never liked the way women were in James Bond,” she told The Standard. “Women have always been a major and incredibly important part of the Secret Service, they always have been. And very brave.
“If you hear about what women did in the French Resistance, they’re amazingly, unbelievably courageous. So, I would tell real stories about extraordinary women who’ve worked in that world.”
In the forthcoming Thursday Murder Club film, Mirren plays a retired spy who’s the founder and leader of a group of crime-solving retirees played by her, Brosnan, Celia Imrie and Sir Ben Kingsley.
When asked if her character, Elizabeth, is a better portrayal of a spy than Bond, she said: “More realistic. But not so much fun as Bond!”
She added: “The great thing about a movie like this is that it reminds everyone, as an older person I have a brain. I have agency, energy, commitment, passion and intellect. It doesn’t all stop when you’re 40.”
The three stars rumoured to be frontrunners to play Bond in the new film from Dune director Denis Villeneuve are Spider-Man star Tom Holland, Babygirl’s Harris Dickinson, and Saltburn’s Jacob Elordi.
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