One of the many reasons that Bond has enjoyed such unique cinematic staying power — to the tune of 25 movies since 1962, with a 26th now in the works — is that the series has reinvented itself a number of times over the decades. Six times, to be precise, with every new actor who has picked up the PPK. Connery. Lazenby. Moore. Dalton. Brosnan. Craig.
Everyone has a favourite, of course, which is usually wrapped up in childhood nostalgia — who your Bond is will be defined by who you grew up watching — and all of them brought their own merits to Q branch. It’s a bit like trying to pick your favourite gadget; sometimes you’re in the mood for the cartoonish excess of an exploding pen or a submarine car, others you want something slick and efficient like a fingerprint-activated handgun.
But let’s be unequivocal: there is obviously a definitive, objectively correct ranking of the Bond actors, which we have assembled for your eyes only. So, did we go big on Brosnan? What if we doubled down on Dalton? Hell, the safe choice would be Connery, right? Read on below to find out.
6. Timothy Dalton
Dalton had the second-shortest tenure as 007, starring in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill in the late ‘80s. They have their staunch defenders, but the pair has been largely forgotten by all but the die-hardiest of Dalton fans; arriving as the world began to thaw out of the Cold War, and as the number of Bond entries crept up to the mid-teens, audiences were beginning to get a little bored. (They still performed well enough at the box office, mind — both made around $150 million on their $30 million budgets.) It hardly helped that the action heroes of the day were muscle-bound Adonises like Arnie and Sly. None of this is Dalton’s fault, and he was pretty good as the martini-swilling super-spy, bringing a darker broodiness to the role that stood in stark contrast to the high-camp flamboyance of the Moore years. He was handsome; he was suave; he had a very modern blood thirst. But he’s probably the last of the six actors you think of when you think “James Bond.”
5. George Lazenby
The Australian model had not been in anything aside from a few TV commercials when he was cast as Sean Connery’s successor in the late ‘60s, and picked up the PPK for a single film, 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. (Early on the film, Lazenby’s Bond quips that “this never happened to the other fellow,” the only time that one Bond has ever acknowledged the existence of another.) When it comes to the 25 existing Bond movies, it’s kind of the hipster’s pick; the movie that beard-stroking Bond aficionados tend to plump for as their favourite to demonstrate their superior taste. It definitely stands out because of its heightened personal stakes — he falls in love with and marries Diana Rigg’s Tracy di Vicenzo, who is murdered by Bond’s archnemesis Blofeld (Telly Savalas) in a surprisingly mature climax — and thrilling action sequences. Lazenby was also good value for his brief stint as the double-O; he probably still has the strongest cheekbones.
4. Roger Moore
There’s no Bond era that divides opinion like the Moore years. It’s when Bond was at its most gleefully bizarre: the silliest gadgets, the most irksomely quotable quips, the jump-the-shark plots and most cartoonish villains. Still, it’s hard not to hold a soft spot for Moore-era maximalism, and his era produced some of the best movies of the lot (think: The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker; there are even fans who’ll go to bat for The Man with the Golden Gun). And there was no man better suited for Bond’s then-embrace of slapstick and Carry On-style innuendo; Moore devoured every single double-entendre he ever had to deliver to a Bond girl, while still managing to carry himself with the appropriate grace and poise. Being 45 when he did his first Bond, Live and Let Die, he was a little old for the role when his last film, A View to a Kill, rolled around 12 years later. But then again, maybe the fact that he was doing all of those stunts in his 50s was part of the ridiculousness.
3. Sean Connery
Some might find it sacrilege to stick the OG Bond in the middle of the deck, but as we’ve already established, there’s no such thing as a mid 007 — everyone listed here did at least a pretty good job. Connery was obviously terrific and set the standard for his successors to follow; there’s good reason that the likes of Dr. No, Goldfinger and From Russia With Love have stuck around in the minds of filmgoers for over 60 years. There may not be a more iconic image than Connery lighting up a cigarette at the card table to the signature horns of the Bond theme in Dr. No, as he spoke those immortal words: “Bond, James Bond.” He oozed class and charisma, arguably stands as the most stylish Bond all these years later — could Brosnan have killed it in a trilby? Maybe, but Connery actually did — and helped to craft the main tropes of Bond that endure to this day. He’d ordinarily be a shoo-in for at least second spot, but…
2. Pierce Brosnan
…he’s just not Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye. Yes, it’s true that Brosnan’s film run is the most inconsistent of the lot; none of his films lived up to the 1995 classic in which he made his debut, taking on Sean Bean’s Alec Trevelyan, an ex-MI6 man, in a bid to prevent him destroying London via EMP. (Though many would argue that his second film, Tomorrow Never Dies, with its satire of the tabloid news-entertainment complex, has aged well in the era of Trump and fake news.) It’s also not like GoldenEye is especially clever on the page: its script is as thick with innuendo as any of the Moore movies, and save for its best-friend-turned-frenemy angle, it follows a fairly rote “Bond saves the world” plot. But Brosnan? What a take on 007 — his Bond is like an amalgamation of everything that made the previous interpretations so great. There’s the darkness of Dalton; the charm and conventional hunkiness of Lazenby; the cheekiness of Moore; and, most importantly, the airless cool of Connery. From the moment he punches that Russian guy in the face while he’s on the toilet, you know you’re in for an all-timer of a performance.
1. Daniel Craig
This isn’t a controversial take in 2025, is it? You might’ve even gotten away with it a couple of decades ago when he helped to reinvigorate Bond with Casino Royale, the second-best Bond movie of all time. (Sorry — call it nostalgia all you like, but GoldenEye will always reign supreme.) His hit rate afterwards was exceptional, with two other entries — Skyfall and, yes, No Time to Die — that would sit somewhere in the top five of Bond flicks. As he has demonstrated across a wide range of roles beyond Bond, Craig is the best out-and-out “actor” to have played the double-O. No doubt helped by slightly more complex, nuanced material than offered to his predecessors, he was the first of the lot to place emphasis on Bond’s manifold human flaws. As a result, he crafted the most complex — and crucially, interesting — version of a character who had already been around for decades when he stepped into his shoes. Now that’s what you call reinvention.