Actor/filmmaker Mel Gibson has been out doing interviews for his recent film “Bandit” and made some headlines the other day whilst offering an update on the long-gestating “Lethal Weapon 5”.
Now, he’s also spoken with JoBlo this week where he touched upon one of the more famous stories from his earlier career – his being offered the role of James Bond.
After the release of his fifth Bond film “For Your Eyes Only” in 1981, Roger Moore was reluctant to return to the role and so various actors were under consideration for his replacement – most notably James Brolin.
Discussing how actors can get pigeon-holed into a genre that they excel in, Gibson spoke about how he was offered 007 himself back around that time:
“I got offered the James Bond movies when I was like twenty-six, which is like forty years ago, okay? And they said, hey, we want you to be the next James Bond. And I thought about it; I was in Australia, I was working with Peter Weir. And I did think about it, and I sort of turned it down – for that reason. Because I thought, look what happened to poor Sean, he got stuck there for like three decades.”
Gibson then went on to confirm the film he was working on with Weir was “The Year of Living Dangerously,” which released in 1982 and deals with a love affair between an Australian journalist (Gibson) and a British Embassy officer (Sigourney Weaver) in Indonesia during the overthrow of President Sukarno.
Moore of course did end up returning to the role with 1983’s underrated “Octopussy”. Meanwhile, numerous other actors tested for the role over the years and didn’t make it, with Moore ultimately succeeded by Timothy Dalton in 1987’s “The Living Daylights”.
