WHEN THE NAMES of the rumored final contenders to play the next James Bond were floated in the press a couple of weeks ago—seemingly Callum Turner, Jack Lowden, Josh O’Connor, and a mystery third candidate, according to Deadline—I heard a lot of the same sentiment afterward. In more or less words, a lot of people seemed to say “I love Josh O’Connor, but he shouldn’t be Bond.” When I dropped the link into a group chat full of people who aren’t inhaling movie news like I am, there was another probably common response: “I don’t know who that guy is, but he doesn’t look like Bond.” To me, that sentiment is exactly why O’Connor is the best—and, in some ways, the only—choice to be the next James Bond. For those not familiar, O’Connor, a 36-year-old Brit who grew up in Cheltenham, has been a working actor for more than a decade, but his star has only really begun to shine in the 2020s.
He won an Emmy for playing Prince Charles in The Crown, and more recently has made splashes in movies like the thrilling and sexy sports film Challengers, Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out film Wake Up Dead Man (which, ironically, he appeared in alongside previous Bond Daniel Craig), and this summer’s Steven Spielberg blockbuster Disclosure Day. It’s not hard to understand why some people’s minds might naturally push against the idea of O’Connor as Bond. Where 007 is typically a classically handsome, devilishly smooth gentleman who almost looks like a video game simulation—seriously, look back at Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan for just a second—O’Connor is a bit off-kilter.
His hair is wavy; his ears are prominent; his smile is asymmetrical. There’s no beating around the bush—he’s been compared more often to Linguini from Pixar’s Ratatouille than the idea most people have of what a James Bond should be. But it’s through those eccentricities that O’Connor shines.
If you take the time to watch his performances, you’ll find the constant image of someone who brings an undeniable charisma to every project, and somehow manages to mold that into something different each time. In Challengers, O’Connor is the kind of guy you want to root against—he’s sleazy, not a particularly good friend, and unrefined. But he brings the perfect bit of steamy, compelling energy to a love triangle that wouldn’t be the same without him.
Co-stars Mike Faist and Zendaya are deserving of credit (as are composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), but O’Connor’s charm is what makes the whole movie work. He pulls a similar magic trick with just about every other performance. In Wake Up Dead Man, he plays a former boxer-turned-priest who once accidentally killed a man in the ring.
Throughout the course of the film, O’Connor goes from someone who wrestles with guilt, shame, and intrigue to someone who can believably talk someone struggling with grief off a ledge—all while both trying to solve a murder and possibly being suspected of that same murder at the same time. In Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, O’Connor plays a less-than-competent, hardly aspirational art thief who stumbles his way through charged political times. Despite this, O’Connor is so magnetic on screen that it’s just about impossible not to like him.
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