The search for the next James Bond is under way – and naturally, everyone has an opinion.
Radio Times asked readers who they would like to see step into 007’s tuxedo next, with around 2,000 fans weighing in on one of the biggest casting questions in modern cinema.
The results were, in some ways, exactly what you might expect. Henry Cavill came out on top, with 101 mentions – 18.4 per cent of the candidate mentions counted – while Tom Hardy followed close behind on 84, and James Norton was not far off with 77.
Beyond these names, a familiar shortlist emerged: Cavill, Hardy, Norton, Tom Hiddleston, Theo James, Idris Elba, Jason Statham and Aidan Turner.
But are fans looking backwards rather than forwards?
The picture has shifted dramatically in recent weeks, with Amazon MGM Studios confirming that “the search for the next James Bond is under way”, and acclaimed casting director Nina Gold – whose credits include Game of Thrones, The Crown and Star Wars – recruited to help find Daniel Craig’s successor.
Gold’s reported brief is not simply that Bond needs to be young enough for a multi-film run. He also has to “ooze sex appeal” – a phrase that instantly complicates the fan vote. Because 007 is not just an action hero. He is a romantic fantasy, a danger sign, a flirt, a seducer and, depending on the era, a professional womaniser.
So the question is not only whether these actors could throw a punch or wear the suit. It is whether they have ever made audiences believe they could walk into a room and change the temperature of it.
With that in mind, here’s how the Radio Times readers’ favourites stack up – and why, in most cases, the dream probably doesn’t survive contact with reality.
Henry Cavill
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
The fans’ favourite – and probably the most obvious Bond-who-never-was, having previously auditioned for the part.
Cavill actually passes the sex appeal test more comfortably than most. In The Tudors, he played Charles Brandon as a courtly heartbreaker – physically imposing, charismatic and more than a little reckless. In The Man from U.N.C.L.E, he also gave perhaps his most obvious Bond audition: clipped, elegant, flirtatious and amused by his own charm.
So the problem with Cavill is not whether he can do seductive. He clearly can. The problem is that his version of Bond already feels fully imagined – perhaps too fully imagined. He would be the classic fantasy casting: handsome, muscular, old-fashioned, faintly arrogant. But at 43, he may now be more ‘Bond we nearly had’ than ‘Bond of the next decade’.
Tom Hardy
Tom Hardy in MobLand. Luke Varley/Paramount+
Hardy’s screen presence tends to be animal, volatile and bruised rather than smooth, but he has played romantic obsession in ITV’s 2009 take on Wuthering Heights, dangerous magnetism in Peaky Blinders and raw physical charisma across much of his film work.
That could make him fascinating as a rougher, more threatening Bond – a 007 who brings danger back into the seduction. But Bond also needs ease. Hardy often suggests a man battling himself, not a man enjoying the game. Add in his age (48), and he feels less like Gold’s “oozing sex appeal” reboot candidate and more like a darker alternative the franchise might have considered in years gone by.
James Norton
James Norton in McMafia.
At 40, Norton is younger than Cavill and Hardy, but still old enough to carry authority. He has played charm, trauma, danger and repression. In Happy Valley, he was chilling rather than charming, but that performance proved he can weaponise charisma. In Grantchester and the BBC’s 2016 version of War & Peace, meanwhile, he showed a more romantic, tortured leading-man quality.
Norton has long treated the rumours with amused detachment. At the 2025 BAFTAs, when told he was the odds-on favourite, he laughed: “Whoever’s deciding on these odds needs to get a new job.” He called reports linking him to Bond “weird and bemusing” and “pure speculation”.
Previously, he had described the rumours as “very flattering, very humbling speculation”, but also “nuts. Absurd. Nonsense. Lovely, lovely nonsense”, admitting he did not know if he would want to do it.
The verdict? Norton probably could work. But if Amazon and Gold really want younger, fresher and less long-rumoured, he may already feel like yesterday’s favourite.
Tom Hiddleston
Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager. Des Willie © Amazon Content Services LLC
Hiddleston has been auditioning for Bond in the public imagination ever since The Night Manager first aired in 2016.
The John le Carré adaptation was effectively a long-form Bond audition: tailored suits, hotel bars, dangerous women, international intrigue and a hero who could charm his way through a room while hiding something darker underneath.
The case for him was obvious: suave, elegant, dry, intelligent and knows exactly how to wear a suit.
But Hiddleston is now 45, and his Bond moment probably belonged to the mid-2010s. Back then, bookmakers even suspended betting after a surge of wagers on him.
A decade later, that smoke has cleared. Hiddleston might’ve been a wonderful Bond in an alternate universe, but he is unlikely to be the reboot candidate now.
Theo James
Theo James in The Gentlemen. Christopher Rafael/Netflix
Theo James is the first name on the readers’ list who might still pass the age test. He is 41 in 2026 – not young-young, but younger than most of the names above.
He also has the Bond ingredients. In The White Lotus, he played Cameron as a sexually charged, arrogant, entitled charmer – exactly the kind of man who uses confidence as a weapon. Then there’s Netflix series The Gentlemen, where he leans into another very Bond-adjacent mode: rich, dangerous, composed, funny and faintly absurd in a very British way. He knows how to play a man who is attractive and morally slippery at the same time.
The problem is that James doesn’t sound especially interested. In 2024, he told The Guardian that the next Bond “probably wouldn’t be me”, adding: “I do think there are better people for that job. And, honestly, it would be terrifying: if you do that, there’s no going back.”
Idris Elba
Idris Elba in A House of Dynamite. Eros Hoagland / Netflix
For years, Idris Elba was the people’s Bond. He had the cool, the danger, the voice, the humour and the effortless authority.
Elba has also never lacked Bond-level sex appeal. In fact, that was always the argument for him. Luther made him brooding, damaged and magnetic; The Wire gave him cool authority; countless red carpet appearances did the rest. He is one of the few actors whose name became attached to Bond partly because he already seemed to carry that mixture of danger, charm and command in real life.
But Elba’s problem is purely practical. He has said the producers are “going younger” and that he was “never truly” in the race. At 53, he is now outside the likely age range for a rebooted, multi-film Bond.
Jason Statham
Jason Statham in A Working Man. WB
Statham can fight, drive, glare and sell violence better than almost anyone, but Bond is not just action. He is seduction, disguise, class performance, emotional damage, absurdity and national myth all wrapped in one.
Clearly, he has built a career on a certain hard-edged action-star magnetism, but Statham is 58, turning 59 in July 2026, so the age question ends the debate before it begins. He also arrives with such a fixed action persona that it is hard to imagine him disappearing into Bond. You would not be watching James Bond. You would be watching Jason Statham do James Bond things.
Aidan Turner
Aidan Turner in And Then There Were None. BBC
Turner might be underrated here. Of the fan favourites, he has one of the clearest romantic-hero credentials thanks to Poldark, where he became a full-blown period-drama heartthrob. That role was built on brooding, longing, moral conflict and, yes, sex appeal.
Turner is 42, turning 43 in June 2026, which puts him in the Cavill zone: not implausible for a standalone Bond, but probably too old to build a long-running reboot around.
He might have been a strong post-Daniel Craig pick five or six years ago. Now, he feels like another actor who fits the fantasy more comfortably than the production reality.
So who does fit?
Radio Times readers’ choices tell us who fans have loved imagining as Bond for the past decade. But Nina Gold’s job is different. She has to find the actor fans will still want in 2036.
That is why the next Bond may be someone who has not yet dominated the fantasy casting conversation. If Gold’s brief really is youth plus sex appeal, then the more plausible names may be actors like bookies’ favourites Callum Turner, Harris Dickinson, or Jacob Elordi– performers young enough to carry the franchise forward, but with enough romantic danger, swagger or screen heat to suggest they could grow into 007.
And that, more than anything, is why the next James Bond probably won’t be the Bond we’ve already spent years expecting.
Read more: Every James Bond movie ranked, from worst to best
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