Henry Cavill<\/a> \u2014 2005<\/p>\n\n\tSeven years before he put on Superman\u2019s cape, a 22-year-old Cavill came remarkably close to slipping into Bond\u2019s tuxedo for Casino Royale. Director Martin Campbell later said the young Brit gave a \u201ctremendous\u201d audition but was simply too young for the role. For his test, Cavill traded the old From Russia With Love bit for a more recent Bond encounter: Pierce Brosnan\u2019s double-entendre-packed first meeting with Xenia Onatopp at the casino in GoldenEye. The role, of course, went to Daniel Craig.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n\tAntony Starr \u2014 2005<\/p>\n
\n\tThe New Zealand actor was 29 and virtually unknown to American audiences when he joined the Casino Royale Bond hunt. Starr performed the same GoldenEye scene as Cavill, but in his native Kiwi accent \u2014 an unusual sound coming out of 007\u2019s mouth. He eventually found international fame playing the considerably less suave Homelander on The Boys.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n\tRupert Friend \u2014 2005<\/p>\n
\n\tFriend had exactly one movie on his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 \u2014 The Libertine, opposite Johnny Depp \u2014 when the 23-year-old Brit found himself auditioning to become Bond. His test used the same GoldenEye bit as Cavill and Starr \u2014 but he obviously didn\u2019t get the part, either. Still, Friend soon landed Pride & Prejudice and eventually got to play a CIA operative on Homeland.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n\tSam Worthington \u2014 2005<\/p>\n
\n\tBefore Pandora came calling, the 29-year-old Australian actor came surprisingly close to winning the Casino Royale sweepstakes. Worthington was flown to London, fitted for a tux and screen-tested with the usual GoldenEye material. Worthington later admitted he could handle Bond\u2019s physicality but struggled with the suave stuff \u2014 especially the accent. Four years later, Avatar turned him into an international star.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right now, somewhere on a soundstage at Pinewood Studios, several young British actors are lining up to have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75,7819,25926,322800,237298],"class_list":["post-942837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-henry-cavill","tag-james-bond","tag-james-brolin","tag-sam-neill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}