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As Speculation about Next Bond Grows, Here’s How Some Actors Have Responded to Casting Rumors

Actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson gestures as he poses for the media before the news conference to promote his latest movie "Bullet Train" in Seoul, South Korea on Aug. 19, 2022. (AP)
Actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson gestures as he poses for the media before the news conference to promote his latest movie "Bullet Train" in Seoul, South Korea on Aug. 19, 2022. (AP)
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As Speculation about Next Bond Grows, Here’s How Some Actors Have Responded to Casting Rumors

Actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson gestures as he poses for the media before the news conference to promote his latest movie "Bullet Train" in Seoul, South Korea on Aug. 19, 2022. (AP)
Actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson gestures as he poses for the media before the news conference to promote his latest movie "Bullet Train" in Seoul, South Korea on Aug. 19, 2022. (AP)

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the latest actor reportedly offered a license to kill and succeed Daniel Craig as the new James Bond.

The “Kick-Ass” star is no stranger to action movies and at 33 is a good age to join the franchise, as producers likely want a 10-year commitment to the role.

Since Craig announced that he was hanging up his tuxedo after five outings as 007 — the last being “No Time to Die” in 2021 — there has been frenzied speculation over which actor will take the coveted role.

Bond producers have not commented on the Taylor-Johnson rumors.

Speculating about the next Bond is a frequent subject (sometimes even before the job is available), leading British actors to adopt various strategies and responses when the topic comes up.

One of the foremost names in the frame over the past few years has been Idris Elba, though producer Barbara Broccoli said in 2022 that the “Luther” star had ruled himself out.

“He apparently has said he’s out,” she told The Associated Press. “We love Idris and he’s been a wonderful friend and we love him as an actor. But I think he feels like a, you know, 10- or 12-year commitment or 15-year commitment might be a bit too much for him.”

“You know, it’s a rumor that’s stuck with me,” Elba said in 2023. “I think I’m the most famous ‘Bond’ actor that never actually played the part. So, what can I say? I’ll take that.”

Elba has high profile fans including Matt Damon. “I think he’s brilliant. I’ll watch him in anything and he makes everything he’s in better and he would make that franchise better.”

“Inception” and “Dunkirk” star Tom Hardy was touted as the next Bond back in 2015, though he claimed to have “heard nothing” about press speculation.

“I think answering something like that means immediately you’re out of the running. So there goes my spot,” he joked.

Luke Evans, who has starred in a wide variety of movies and TV series from “The Hobbit” to “Beauty and the Beast” to “Nine Perfect Strangers,” felt his dream of playing Bond has slipped away.

“By the time they cast it again, I’ll be too old,” the 44-year-old actor told The Associated Press in 2022.

Richard Madden brushed off rumors about his involvement in Bond at a press conference for “Rocket Man” in Cannes back in 2019.

“It’s very flattering to be involved in that conversation at all. But it’s all just talk and I’m sure next week you’ll be someone different,” he laughed.

Other names connected with the role in recent years include Regé-Jean Page, who shot to fame in “Bridgerton” as the Duke of Hastings, Theo James, who earned an Emmy nomination for his role in “The White Lotus,” and Henry Golding, star of “Crazy Rich Asians.”

Every time Golding has appeared on a red carpet wearing a tuxedo, rumors swirl about him being the next 007, but he remains tight-lipped.

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Movie Review: From Bumper to Bumper, ‘F1’ Is Formula One Spectacle 

Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
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Movie Review: From Bumper to Bumper, ‘F1’ Is Formula One Spectacle 

Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski’s “F1,” a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor.

Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in “Top Gun: Maverick,” has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on “Maverick,” takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping score.

And, again, our central figure is an older, high-flying cowboy plucked down in an ultramodern, gas-guzzling conveyance to teach a younger generation about old-school ingenuity and, maybe, the enduring appeal of denim.

But whereas Tom Cruise is a particularly forward-moving action star, Brad Pitt, who stars as the driving-addicted Sonny Hayes in “F1,” has always been a more arrestingly poised presence. Think of the way he so calmly and half-interestedly faces off with Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.” In the opening scene of “F1,” he’s sleeping in a van with headphones on when someone rouses him. He splashes some water on his face and walks a few steps over to the Daytona oval, where he quickly enters his team’s car, in the midst of a 24-hour race. Pitt goes from zero to 180 mph in a minute.

Sonny, a long-ago phenom who crashed out of Formula One decades earlier and has since been racing any vehicle, even a taxi, he can get behind the wheel of, is approached by an old friend, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) about joining his flagging F1 team, APX. Sonny turns him down at first but, of course, he joins and “F1” is off to the races.

The title sequence, exquisitely timed to the syncopated rhythms of Zimmer’s score, is a blistering introduction. The hotshot rookie driver Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) is just running a practice lap, but Kosinski, his camera adeptly moving in and out of the cockpit, uses the moment to plunge us into the high-tech world of Formula One, where every inch of the car is connected to digital sensors monitored by a watchful team. Here, that includes technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and Kaspar Molinski (Kim Bodnia), the team’s chief.

Verisimilitude is of obvious importance to the filmmakers, who bathe this very Formula One-authorized film in all the sleek operations and globe-trotting spectacle of the sport. That Apple, which produced the film, would even go for such a high-priced summer movie about Formula One is a testament to the upswing in popularity of a sport once quite niche in America, and of the halo effects of both the Netflix series “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” and the seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, an executive producer on “F1.”

Whether “F1” pleases diehards, I’ll leave to more ardent followers of the circuit. But what I can say definitively is that Claudio Miranda knows how to shoot it. The cinematographer, who has shot all of Kosinski’s films as well as wonders like Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,” brings Formula One to vivid, visceral life. When “F1” heads to the big races, Miranda is always simultaneously capturing the zooming cars from the asphalt while backgrounding it with the sweeping spectacle of a course like the UK’s fabled Silverstone Circuit.

OK, you might be thinking, so the racing is good; is there a story? There’s what I’d call enough of one, though you might have to go to the photo finish to verify that. When Sonny shows up, and rapidly turns one practice vehicle into toast, it’s clear that he’s going to be an agent of chaos at APX, a low-ranking team that’s in heavy debt and struggling to find a car that performs.

This gives Pitt a fine opportunity to flash his charisma, playing Sonny as an obsessive who refuses any trophy and has no real interest in money, either. The flashier, media-ready Noah watches Sonny's arrival with skepticism, and the two begin more as rivals than teammates. Idris is up to the mano-a-mano challenge, but he’s limited by a role ultimately revolving around and reducing to a young Black man learning a lesson in work ethic.

A relationship does develop, but “F1” struggles to get its characters out of the starting blocks, keeping them closer to the cliches they start out as. The actor who, more than anyone, keeps the momentum going is Condon, playing an aerodynamics specialist whose connection with Pitt’s Sonny is immediate. Just as she did in between another pair of headstrong men in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Condon is a rush of naturalism.

If there’s something preventing “F1” from hitting full speed, it’s its insistence on having its characters constantly voice Sonny’s motivations. The same holds true on the race course, where broadcast commentary narrates virtually every moment of the drama. That may be a necessity for a sport where the crucial strategies of hot tires and pit-stop timing aren't quite household concepts. But the best car race movies — from “Grand Prix” to “Senna” to “Ferrari” — know when to rely on nothing but the roar of an engine.

“F1” steers predictably to the finish line, cribbing here and there from sports dramas before it. (Tobias Menzies plays a board member with uncertain corporate goals.) When “F1” does, finally, quiet down, for one blissful moment, the movie, almost literally, soars. It's not quite enough to forget all the high-octane macho dramatics before it, but it's enough to glimpse another road “F1” might have taken.