Following his stint as Bond, Dalton flourished in a steady if more low-key career, with roles in The Rocketeer, Hot Fuzz, Toy Story 3, Doctor Who, and many more. His over-the-top villainous turns in The Rocketeer and Hot Fuzz seemed to typecast him as a particularly cartoonish bad guy in Hollywood, which also led to similar work on shows like Yellowstone, although he also played law enforcement types in lesser-known projects like The Informant, The Tourist, and Made Men. Perhaps his best-known post-007 role is that of Malcolm Murray on the Showtime series Penny Dreadful, where he played a Great White Hunter in Victorian London who has gone gray. It’s both sinister and sympathetic, as it’s a character out for some form of redemption or penance. More recently Dalton played the Chief on the DC series Doom Patrol. Outside of live-action, he has also been heard as the voice of Mr. Pricklepants in Toy Story 3 and 4, as well as a handful of related shorts.

While Dalton managed to leverage his pair of Bond adventures into a reliable career as a character actor, he probably has the least “movie star”-type profile of any of the Bond actors, with the exception of George Lazenby. Of his time as Bond, Dalton told The AV Club, “It’s real, it’s valuable, it’s exciting, and it can give great pleasure. And yet, it’s somehow unreal.”

Pierce Brosnan

Forty-two years old when he landed the role of Bond (having been denied it eight years previously), Pierce Brosnan was the second-oldest 007 after Roger Moore. And like Moore, the Irish thespian was already a well-known TV star thanks to his four seasons leading Remington Steele on NBC. Brosnan’s career before Bond, Remington aside, started in the theater and quickly moved into films like The Long Good Friday, The Mirror Crack’d, The Lawnmower Man, and Mrs. Doubtfire, along with acclaimed miniseries like The Manions of America and Noble House.

Brosnan’s Bond—a mix of Connery’s toughness and Moore’s suavity—has been underrated performance-wise, while his four films only offer one standout in GoldenEye (1995) and a few moments of greatness in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and The World Is Not Enough (1999). He went out on a low note with 2002’s Die Another Day, but his era certainly brought Bond back to box office glory after the Dalton years and the six-year gap that followed. He also appeared in films like The Thomas Crown Affair and Mars Attacks! in between Bond outings.

Films like Thomas Crown, Dante’s Peak, and After the Sunset seemed manufactured to position Brosnan as a Hollywood leading man going forward, but that didn’t quite happen. Post-Bond, Brosnan has delivered solid and often terrific performances without a whole lot to show in terms of box office. The two Mamma Mia! films are an exception, but also remain among his worst-reviewed movies. Then again those movies are infectiously adored by a fanbase divorced from film critic circles; they even embraced Brosnan putting on a brave face while attempting to sing and dance, occassionally in disco pants. That stark departure from his suave 007 image was one of the many times in his post-Bond resume where the actor pursued a direction that could be labeled as anti-Bond.

His best films around this period also include The Tailor of Panama (in which he plays a dissolute, utterly corrupt MI6 agent), The Matador (quite possibly his finest work, in which he plays a debauched and aging hitman who’s going through a crisis of conscience and falling apart as a result), and The Ghost Writer (as a compromised former prime minister). Several of those again lean into perverting his 007 image. Meanwhile the less successful The November Man found him returning to a more traditional spy narrative.