Jamie Dornan Could Be The Next James Bond?
Could 50 Shades of Grey's Jamie Dornan make the big leap and become the next James Bond? He's playing coy about the possibility.
Jamie Dornan first broke through to audiences in the 2013 crime drama series The Fall, playing a conflicted serial killer opposite TV legend Gillian Anderson. It seems he is in the running to play a more government-approved kind of killer, as he is one of the names that gets consistently mentioned as a possibility for the next James Bond. In certain circles, the role of 007 is as hot a commodity as racing horses or stock prices and is always subject to sudden change. In a recent interview with Esquire Magazine, Dornan revealed that he was indeed aware of the fact that his name comes up a lot in discussion of the matter, but refused to give any specifics on the subject. Whether this is because he is under some kind of non-disclosure agreement or is not currently in communication with the people who make these decisions or some even more mysterious Hollywood reason, it is impossible to say. Here is what Jamie Dornan had to say about it, though:
It’s fun and it’s a cool thing to be in the mix for that sort of thing. I do think it’s very transparent in terms of if you look at that list, there’s not one person on that list who doesn’t have some content at the moment that’s doing well.
The actor actually began his career as a musician, then turned to modeling (which is pretty good work if you can get it and you have the chiseled good looks of an Irish god). The musician bit has come in handy in Jamie Dornan’s career, as an increasing amount of his on-screen work seems to involve some kind of musical performance. In the Kristen Wiig comedy Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, he played a love interest who suddenly bursts into a song and pirouettes in the sand. In one of the installments of the BDSM blockbuster Fifty Shades trilogy, Dornan sang a Paul McCartney solo song. And in his recent critically acclaimed turn in Kenneth Branagh Academy Award-winning coming of age film Belfast, he managed to have a quick moment of pop soulfulness with a performance of “Everlasting Love.”
However, James Bond himself is not particularly known for his musical performances (theme songs notwithstanding), so if Jamie Dornan eventually does get cast in the role of the world’s most long-running British spy, he might not get that chance. The James Bond franchise is currently in a fallow state, with the most recent actor to play the role, Daniel Craig, having just bowed out with 2021’s No Time to Die. It will likely be some time before an announcement is made of who will be putting on the tuxedo and drinking the very specific martinis, and regardless of who is chosen, it will likely be a grueling process.
In the meantime, Jamie Dornan most recently starred in The Tourist, a BBC One thriller drama miniseries in which he played an amnesiac known only as The Man. He is currently in production on the spy thriller Heart of Stone, which he will co-star in with Gal Gadot, so he has clearly been making his way up the A-list. If Dornan does end up playing James Bond sometime in the next reboot, it would seem only like a logical step for his career.
