Oscar-Winning Actor Almost Became James Bond 20 Years Ago, Not Daniel Craig!

Now 51 years old, actor Christian Bale has portrayed a wide array of characters throughout his distinguished career.

Over the decades, Bale has taken on roles as varied as the serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, cowboy Dan Evans in 3:10 to Yuma, insomniac worker Trevor Reznick in The Machinist, race car driver Ken Miles in Ford v Ferrari, and of course, the vigilante Bruce Wayne, also known as Batman, in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy.

Who Would Follow Pierce Brosnan?

Yet, another possibly even more famous hero nearly joined Bale’s extensive roster of characters. As revealed in the book Christian Bale: The Inside Story of the Darkest Batman, authored by Harrison Cheung and Nicola Pittam in 2012, Bale was once offered the role of… James Bond!

According to the biography (recently featured on SlashFilm), Bale was indeed a serious candidate to succeed Pierce Brosnan as the spy 007 in the early 2000s.

“Very British”

However, according to the book, the actor declined the offer from producer Barbara Broccoli, stating that for him, the James Bond franchise was “very British” and that the character embodied “all the worst stereotypes about England and British actors”, provocatively adding, perhaps in reference to his role in American Psycho, that he had “already played a serial killer.”

As we all know, it was Daniel Craig who was eventually chosen to portray the renowned British secret agent in the next five films.

Would you have liked to see Christian Bale as 007?

(Re)discover the trailer for “Casino Royale”…