Acting veteran Sam Neill is best known for his role in Jurassic Park, but he almost became the star of the Timothy Dalton becoming the fifth James Bond for the fifteenth and sixteenth films. Sam Neill's first leading role came in the 1977 action thriller Sleeping Dogs before achieving global recognition for his role as Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg's 1993 classic Jurassic Park. He has continued to have a successful career, with recent high-profile performances including Chief Inspector Campbell in Peaky Blinders and Hector Faulkner in Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
But Neill's career could have taken a different direction had he landed the part of James Bond. In the early 1980s, it became apparent that Roger Moore would retire as 007 after his seventh James Bond film, A View to a Kill, so the search for a replacement began. Alongside Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan, Sam Neill was shortlisted to play Bond, partly on the back of his performance in the British TV spy show Reilly, Ace of Spies which proved he had the credentials for Ian Fleming's famous fictional MI6 agent. If Sam Neill had become Bond, then he may have missed out on some of his most famous roles, most notably in Jurassic Park.
Why Sam Neill Wasn't Quite Cast As Bond
The leading candidates to replace Roger Moore to become the fourth James Bond were Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Sam Neill. Multiple of The Living Daylights production team, including director John Glen, wanted Sam Neill to take on the role, and the New Zealand actor even auditioned to play Bond. Part of the reason that Neill did not land the role of 007 was that he didn't really want it. Recently, Sam Neill has been open about why playing Bond wasn't for him, and itted that he was reluctant to even screen test for The Living Daylights. It was Neill's agent who forced him into doing the audition, despite Neill not wanting to, because of the fame and notoriety that goes along with being Bond.
Timothy Dalton secured the part of James Bond thanks to producer Albert Broccoli's insistence that Dalton was the right man for the job. Dalton had previously been approached several times to play the British spy, first in his early 20s after Sean Connery departed after You Only Live Twice, and then throughout the 1970s and 1980s when Roger Moore's contract was on a film-by-film basis. While behind the scenes most wanted Sam Neill for the role, Broccoli, co-founder of the James Bond production company Eon Productions, had the final say and chose Dalton instead.
Like Sam Neill, Pierce Brosnan missed out on James Bond's role in The Living Daylights. Brosnan famously was the man to replace Dalton after just two Bond movies, with the Irish actor playing the secret agent in four films from 1995 to 2002, starting with Pierce Brosnan almost played Bond before GoldenEye, and was even offered the role in The Living Daylights before scheduling conflicts with Remington Steele made Albert Broccoli go for Dalton. As history shows, it worked out for both Sam Neill and Pierce Brosnan, with Neill not getting the Bond role that he never wanted, and Brosnan finally getting to play 007.
How Would Sam Neill's Bond Have Been Different From Dalton's?
Had Sam Neill played James Bond in The Living Daylights, it's likely that the New Zealand actor's 007 would have been surprisingly similar to Timothy Dalton's. After Roger Moore's run as Bond, Broccoli wanted to make the franchise agent a more rough and authentic character like he is in Ian Fleming's James Bond books. The shift to a darker Bond ran parallel to the changing social expectations and the direction of movie themes at the time. Popular movies of the mid-1980s like Rocky IV, The Terminator, and Tom Cruise’s Top Gun offered moviegoers grittier moments and storylines in action movies compared to the 1970s, so Bond had to change as well. Timothy Dalton struck the right tone with his James Bond, but Sam Neill has proven that he would have been able to deliver a darker take on Bond as well. His performance in Peaky Blinders as the corrupt antagonist Inspector Campbell shows that Neill has the ability to play gritty, nuanced characters, which he would have needed to be James Bond in The Living Daylights.
How Sam Neill As Bond Would Have Changed Cinema
The biggest question if Sam Neill had landed the role of James Bond is whether he would have played Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, and the likely answer is no. When Timothy Dalton signed on to play Bond, he had a three-movie contract - which ended up being a messy situation because of legal issues that meant Dalton only played James Bond twice. After a delay in producing what would have been Dalton's third Bond movie, producer Albert Broccoli gave him the ultimatum of either coming back for multiple movies or none at all. With Dalton only wanting to play James Bond one more time, he respectfully walked away.
But history could have been different with Sam Neill at the helm, particularly if he agreed to the James Bond casting offer that Dalton declined. If Neill was James Bond throughout the 1990s, then he would not have been able to be in Jurassic Park because of scheduling conflicts. Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss, William Hurt, and Kurt Russell were among the actors who almost played Jurassic Park's Alan Grant, so had Neill not been cast one of them would have been. Potential scheduling conflicts may have also ruled Sam Neill out of Event Horizon, another of his most famous movies.
If Sam Neill was James Bond, then it could have reduced his chances of playing Dr. Alan Grant to begin with. As Bond, Neill may have started to be typecast and not have the chance to play characters like the educated and fatherly Alan Grant, given he would have instead been known for playing a gritty super spy. Still, Sam Neill got his wish and wasn't cast as James Bond, and Timothy Dalton's version of the character is ed as one of the better 007's thanks to his darker take on the MI6 agent that inspired future actors, including the recently retired Bond, Daniel Craig.
