James Bond Characters: Names, Actors and Who They Are

The main James Bond characters are the MI6 agent James Bond, his chief M, the gadget supplier Q, the secretary Miss Moneypenny and the CIA ally Felix Leiter, set against villains such as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Auric Goldfinger, Le Chiffre and Jaws. The series spans 25 EON films, plus the two unofficial, non EON films Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again, and the same handful of roles has been recast again and again. If you are planning a marathon, the James Bond movies in order page shows where each character first turns up.

James Bond is a British secret agent whose double 0 number, 007, gives him a license to kill. Six actors have played him in the EON series: Sean Connery in Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever; George Lazenby in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; Roger Moore for seven films from Live and Let Die to A View to a Kill; Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill; Pierce Brosnan in four films from GoldenEye; and Daniel Craig in five films from Casino Royale (2006) to No Time to Die. The two non EON films add more: David Niven plays Sir James Bond in Casino Royale (1967), and Connery returns in Never Say Never Again. For the full run of faces, see James Bond actors in order.

The MI6 circle around Bond is M, his boss, Q, his gadget supplier, and Miss Moneypenny, the secretary who greets him on his return. M is played by Bernard Lee in the early films, Robert Brown in the 1980s, Judi Dench from GoldenEye to Skyfall, and Ralph Fiennes, who plays Gareth Mallory in Skyfall and is credited as M in Spectre, with Edward Fox in Never Say Never Again. Q supplies the gadgets: Desmond Llewelyn is credited as Q in Thunderball and plays the role through The World Is Not Enough, John Cleese takes over as Q in Die Another Day (after playing R in The World Is Not Enough), and Ben Whishaw plays Q from Skyfall, with Alec McCowen in Never Say Never Again. Dr. No credits Peter Burton as Major Boothroyd, the equipment man in that first film. Miss Moneypenny is played by Lois Maxwell, Caroline Bliss, Samantha Bond and Naomie Harris, with Pamela Salem in Never Say Never Again.

Bond's best known ally is Felix Leiter of the CIA, who first appears in Dr. No played by Jack Lord. Eight actors have played him across the EON and non EON films, including Cec Linder, Rik Van Nutter, Norman Burton, David Hedison, John Terry, Bernie Casey and Jeffrey Wright. Other helpers tend to belong to one adventure: Quarrel (John Kitzmiller), the Jamaican boatman of Dr. No; Ali Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendáriz) in From Russia with Love; Tiger Tanaka (Tetsuro Tamba), who leads the Japanese secret service in You Only Live Twice; Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini) in Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace; and Valentin Zukovsky, played by Robbie Coltrane in two Brosnan films, GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough. In Skyfall, the gamekeeper Kincade (Albert Finney) fills that space.

Bond's best known villains are Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Auric Goldfinger, Le Chiffre, Jaws and Raoul Silva, and several of them are as famous as Bond. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, is played by Donald Pleasence, Telly Savalas, Charles Gray and Christoph Waltz in the EON films, with Max von Sydow in Never Say Never Again. Auric Goldfinger, the gold dealer played by Gert Fröbe, is served by the silent, deadly Oddjob (Harold Sakata). Le Chiffre, the banker to terrorists, is Mads Mikkelsen in Casino Royale (2006) and Orson Welles in Casino Royale (1967). Jaws, the steel toothed giant, belongs to Richard Kiel in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. Raoul Silva, a former MI6 agent turned cyberterrorist, is Javier Bardem in Skyfall. Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) and Elektra King (Sophie Marceau) round out a long list, and the James Bond villains page goes through them in full.

The main female James Bond characters include Vesper Lynd, Honey Ryder, Pussy Galore, Tracy Di Vicenzo and Madeleine Swann, and the actors are the easiest way to tell the eras apart. Vesper Lynd, a Treasury agent, is Eva Green in Casino Royale (2006) and Ursula Andress in Casino Royale (1967). Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) opens the run in Dr. No, followed by Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi), Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), Domino Derval (Claudine Auger), Tracy Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg), Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) and Solitaire (Jane Seymour). Mary Goodnight, an agent in The Man with the Golden Gun, is Britt Ekland. The Moore and Dalton years add Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach), Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet), Octopussy (Maud Adams) and Kara Milovy (Maryam d'Abo). From the Brosnan films come Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco), Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) and Jinx (Halle Berry), and the Craig films bring Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko), Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) and Nomi (Lashana Lynch).

The recurring roles change least in the MI6 office and most in the field, and the casting credits show it. Dr. No already holds the core of the series: Bernard Lee as M, Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny and Jack Lord as Felix Leiter, with M sending Bond to Jamaica, where he teams up with Leiter and the boatman Quarrel. Maxwell then stays in the role through A View to a Kill, while Quarrel is the one early ally who gets a second life: Roy Stewart plays him in the Live and Let Die cast list, a decade after Kitzmiller.

Q is the clearest case of one actor defining a role. Desmond Llewelyn is credited as Q from Thunderball on and appears in the series 17 times, according to CBS News, which reported that he died in a car crash on 19 December 1999 at 85, weeks after The World Is Not Enough. That film already shows the handover: John Cleese is credited as R there, and he is Q in Die Another Day. In my opinion, that two-step succession is why the change feels smooth, since the audience met Cleese as Llewelyn's assistant first. Ben Whishaw's Q in Skyfall is a different kind of reset, with a new actor and a new generation of Bond's support staff arriving together.

Felix Leiter shows the opposite pattern, a role played by a new face almost every time. Jack Lord, Cec Linder, Rik Van Nutter and Norman Burton each have a single EON credit, David Hedison plays him in both Live and Let Die and Licence to Kill, and Jeffrey Wright carries the part across three Craig-era films. Licence to Kill is the film that gives Leiter the most to do: Bond is about to be best man at his wedding, and the plot grows from that friendship. No Time to Die starts the same way in reverse, with Leiter asking a retired Bond for help in Jamaica. I read Wright's run as the point where Leiter stops being a cameo and becomes a continuing character, and that is an opinion, not a credit.

Blofeld is the role that tracks the franchise's changes of tone. Pleasence's Blofeld in You Only Live Twice runs a hidden base, Savalas has him operating from a clinic on Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and Gray's Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever is introduced through lookalikes, as Bond hunts the man he blames for his wife Tracy's death. Waltz then returns the name in Spectre and No Time to Die. Five different faces in seven decades make Blofeld the best example of a single villain who is really a series of interpretations.

The non EON films are best read as alternate casts. Never Say Never Again is a retelling of the Thunderball story, made by Jack Schwartzman's Taliafilm with Kevin McClory as executive producer, and it recasts nearly every role: Klaus Maria Brandauer plays Maximilian Largo where Adolfo Celi played Emilio Largo, Kim Basinger plays Domino Petachi where Claudine Auger played Domino Derval, and Bernie Casey takes Leiter from Rik Van Nutter. Casino Royale (1967) goes further. Producer Charles K. Feldman owned the rights to Fleming's novel and made a spoof, billing Peter Sellers first as Evelyn Tremble, with David Niven third as Sir James Bond and Woody Allen as Jimmy Bond. TCM notes that the film had multiple directors, and the cast list shows five. In my view, the 1967 film is where the series' habit of passing the name from person to person is turned into the joke itself, since several agents are given the name James Bond.

One actor spans both worlds in an unusual way. Ursula Andress is billed second as Honey Ryder in Dr. No and again second as Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale (1967), so the first Bond girl on screen is also the first screen Vesper. Eva Green's Vesper in 2006 is a Treasury agent who goes with Bond to watch the money in the Montenegro poker game, a much more dramatic role than the 1967 version.

The table matches each major role to the actors credited in the 25 EON films, with the non EON actors noted where they apply.

For the wider picture of who stars and directs, the James Bond cast page lists the full ensemble, and the James Bond movies hub links every film.