This Never Happened to the Other Fellow Quiz

Answer: Roger Moore's

Early in Moore's first film, "Live and Let Die", Bond is in a taxi tailing a suspicious car when the driver warns him that he's heading straight into Harlem. Bond tells the driver, "there's an extra 20 bucks for you" for keeping with the car, to which the driver, who is black, responds, "Man, for 20 bucks I'd take you to a Ku Klux Klan cookout." Bond films are renowned for capturing the spirit of their given era, and perhaps none takes greater liberties in doing so than "Live and Let Die", which indulges heavily in Blaxploitation themes that were popular in films of the time.

Moore played Bond for seven films, beginning with "Live and Let Die" in 1973 and finishing with "A View to a Kill" in 1985.

Answer: George Lazenby

Lazenby, as Bond, finds himself with a few minutes to kill while covertly copying documents from a law office in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", and takes time to check out the centerfold in a 1969 issue of Playboy.

Lazenby had the unenviable task of being the first actor to replace Sean Connery as Bond, and the filmmakers took pains to portray him as "man-enough" for the part, the above scene being one of the cruder examples of this.

Answer: Sean Connery

Connery, as Bond in "Goldfinger", comments, while chilling champagne, that drinking Dom Perignon above 38 degrees Fahrenheit is "as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs".

Connery was the first actor to play James Bond, acting in six films between 1962 and 1971. His portrayal of Bond as a dignified gentleman with sophisticated taste and a killer instinct set the stage for the rest of the series. I think, however, we can assume that Bond of later decades would have had a slightly better appreciation for the greatest rock and roll band in history.

Answer: Pierce Brosnan

In "Die Another Day", Brosnan, as Bond, is captured by North Korean soldiers and held for over a year, before being sent back to Britain in a prisoner exchange. For several on-screen moments he appears most un-Bond-like, unshaven, with shoulder length hair, and conspicuously lacking his trademark charm. "Die Another Day" was the fourth and final Bond film for Brosnan, who played Bond from from 1995 to 2002.

A somewhat similar situation to the one mentioned above came about off screen in 1969, when George Lazenby, having fallen out with the Bond producers, appeared with long hair and a beard at the official release of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", hampering efforts to promote the film and further ensuring that he would not be back to reprise the role.

Answer: Daniel Craig

Daniel Craig, in "Casino Royal", portrays a much grittier version of Bond than his predecessor, mostly to critical praise. However, some might not have been prepared for the torture scene, which breaks new territory for the franchise, in terms of its extreme depiction of pain and the compromising position it puts the protagonist in, including showing him tied to a chair in the buff. Perhaps the filmmakers felt that this was a good way to deal head-on with the fact that Craig had appeared naked in previous films, one of many points of controversy in the run up to his first "Bond" film.

Craig is the most recent actor to play Bond at the writing of this quiz, having taken over the role in 2006.

Answer: Timothy Dalton

While in Afghanistan in the film "The Living Daylights", Bond, portrayed by Dalton, joins forces with Afghan resistance leader, Kamran Shah, in order to take on corrupt KGB officer Giorgi Koskov. In the years immediately after the release of the film, the resistance portrayed by Kamran and his militia would succeed in overthrowing the occupying Soviets, resulting in the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan.

Dalton portrayed Bond for two films in the late 1980s, both of which are often credited with having plots which are more plausible geo-politically than the films that proceeded them. That Bond's involvement in the fighting in Afghanistan in "The Living Daylights" unintentionally contributed to the rise of a totalitarian regime is an ironic testament to this.

Answer: Daniel Craig

Perhaps no criticism was leveled at Daniel Craig more frequently, when he took over the role of Bond, than that he had the wrong hair color. Many observers thought that his blond hair made him unsuitable for the part of Bond, who had previously been portrayed by dark-haired actors.

Not surprisingly, contention over Craig's hair color subsided dramatically after his films were released.

Answer: Roger Moore

Although he was the third actor to play Bond, taking over the role 11 years after the series' began, Moore is actually the oldest of the first six actors to play Bond, having been born three years before the original Bond, Sean Connery. Criticism of Moore's age became a theme about midway through his tenure, and this became exacerbated as he kept the role longer and for more official films than any other actor in the first 22 films of the series.

By "A View to a Kill", Moore's final film, he was 57 years old, a fact that is central to many negative reviews of the film, and which, according to Moore himself, had a ridiculous effect on the impact of the character and the quality of the film.

Answer: George Lazenby

After Connery quit the role of James Bond, the producers struggled to find a replacement, and contacted Lazenby after seeing him in a television advertisement. Lazenby was actually a model, but he landed the role after an audition, largely due to his physical appearance and an ability to perform well in action sequences. Though reviews have generally become kinder over the years, his performance received mostly critical reviews at the time, and conflict with the filmmakers coupled with lower than expected box office returns resulted in him not reprising the role for a second film.

All the other actors to play Bond in the first 22 films of the series were accomplished in either film, television or theater. In the case of Moore, Dalton and Brosnan, they were given consideration for the part, in one way or another, several years before actually becoming Bond.

Answer: Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan

Only Moore and Craig were born in England, hailing from Stockwell and Fiona respectively. Connery is from Edinburgh, Scotland; Lazenby from Goulburn, Australia; Dalton from Colwyn Bay, Wales; and Brosnan from Drogheda, Ireland.

In the "James Bond" novels, written by Ian Fleming, it is revealed that Bond was the son of a Scottish father and Swiss mother, and may have been born abroad. However, such details are not presented in the first 22 films of the series.