For their eyes only: Sam Mendes shakes up his Bond cast with a top secret
By Baz Bamigboye
Last updated at 3:42 PM on 28th October 2011
Sam Mendes wanted to spring a surprise on his high-calibre cast gathered at Pinewood studios for a script reading of the latest 007 adventure.
As the likes of Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem and Ralph Fiennes sat leafing through their scripts, each stamped ‘Highly Confidential’, with every page watermarked and coded, they must all have been wondering: who on earth could the Oscar-winning director be bringing in who might leave them shaken and (pleasantly) stirred?
Try Albert Finney, a legendary actor, revered by his peers and about to make his Bond debut at the age of 75.
An executive close to the production told me: ‘It was one of those fabulous “This can’t get any better!” moments because Mendes has upped the game by bringing in Bardem and Fiennes — and they’ve already got Dame Judi Dench.
‘So you think, well, who else can they get to make this any classier?’
Finney, who has been in remission from cancer of the prostate for several years, will play a Foreign Office mandarin with powers over the Secret Intelligence Service, described to me as a reasonably big role and full of class.
The part probably makes him M’s boss, though she — as played by Judi — might not see it that way.
Interestingly, I thought Judi and Albert must surely have worked together before, because they were at the Old Vic in the late Fifties and early Sixties, but I could find no record of them ever having trodden the boards on the same stage or appearing in the same movie.
(If I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll be set straight!) The thespians were joined at the studio by Naomie Harris who, as revealed here, will play Miss Moneypenny; Berenice Marlohe as the requisite femme fatale (are we past using the term ‘Bond girl’ in the 21st century?) and Rory Kinnear, who will play M’s chief of staff, Bill Tanner.
He will have more to do in this movie than when he played Tanner in Quantum Of Solace.
Ben Whishaw and Helen McCrory have as yet unspecified roles.
John LOGAN, who wrote Gladiator and who has been winning acclaim for his sublime script for the forthcoming film Coriolanus, has long toiled over the Bond 23 script.
And now Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, keepers of the Bond movie flame, have asked him to be involved in writing other screenplays based on Ian Fleming’s famous espionage officer.
Rehearsals and camera tests continue this week, and next week shooting will begin on Bond 23, which will be released next autumn on the 50th anniversary of the first Bond film, Dr No.
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