Next James Bond lost Outlander star over personality trait

Outlander: Sam Heughan demonstrates how to speak Gaelic

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Long before the release of Daniel Craig’s final James Bond movie, No Time To Die, last year, he went up against the hunky Outlander star Sam Heughan in a string of auditions. The Jamie Fraser actor has now opened up on why he didn’t get the role, and how his own flaws ruined his chances.

Heughan bared all in his new autobiography, Waypoints: My Scottish Journey, which hit store shelves earlier this week.

In an excerpt released in Entertainment Weekly, Heughan explained that the 007 audition in 2005 came at a stage “in my life where I probably wasn’t ready for it, but I wonder what would have happened if I had got it”.

Before Craig was confirmed to play Bond in 2006’s Bond reboot, Casino Royale, the competition was fierce. Not only did the British actor go up against Heughan, but he also took on Superman star Henry Cavill before coming out victorious.

Ultimately, however, Heughan revealed he missed out on James Bond because he didn’t have a specific character trait.

Heughan was 25, part of a group of hopefuls in their twenties including Henry Cavill, when he auditioned. He said: “I think they were looking into a younger James Bond, which is what I suspect will happen next. It was such a strange experience, but I enjoyed it. I went in with a script and they were like: ‘We might get you to read something from this scene,’ but they don’t tell you what it’s from.”

He added: “After that, I was taken upstairs and I met Barbara Broccoli and Martin Campbell, the director at the time. There was a golden gun on the table — I guess from The Man With The Golden Gun? — and we sat around a very large wooden table and talked a bit about Bond. It was strange, as they didn’t want to talk about Bond, but they talked about Bond. It’s all very secret service.”

Heughan revealed in his memoir: “I knew there would be stiff competition, of course, and ultimately Daniel Craig made Bond his own. When I learned the role had gone elsewhere, however, the feedback I received boiled down to the fact that I wasn’t edgy enough by nature.”

At the time, Heughan was a relatively unknown Scottish actor who had only starred in a handful of film and TV credits under his belt. Since then, of course, he has become the main star of Outlander, the brutish and seductive Jamie Fraser.

Despite this unexpected response from the James Bond bosses, Heughan admitted he was not hurt by the exchange.

“Following that experience,” he confessed. “I learned to appear naturally on that level when required. Even though I was essentially acting outside of the actual audition, it became just one more thing I was prepared to do in order to land a part. I considered it to be a challenge in some ways; a performance I could pretend was really me that I could switch on and off at will. It wasn’t a question of becoming a bad boy.”

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Heughan added that he felt as if the “edge” Bond bosses were referencing was more of a critique of his “self-confidence”.

He also noted that he wasn’t sure how being more “edgy” would have helped the character of James Bond in the ensuing films.

He explained: “I’m always keen to take on criticism so I can improve as an actor, but the suggestion seemed to be that I lacked this quality in my real character. I could not see what bearing that would have on playing the role, but it was out of my hands, and meant to be.”

Heughan was once one of the most popular actors in the running to become the new-and-improved Bond, but his lead has stagnated in recent months.

Just last week, Ladbrokes awarded frontrunner Regé-Jean Page a staggering 3/1 on becoming the next 007.

He was joined by the likes of Henry Cavill, with 7/2, and Tom Hardy, with 8/1.

Heughan was not present in the top nine candidates for the role – does this mean his chances of becoming the secret agent have dwindled completely?

The James Bond series is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video now.

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