And you think: “Oh, right, wow, OK: a gun and some speed pills, that’s a safe combination.” But it does sort of indicate that he’s twisted. He goes to the quartermaster in the book and pulls out his gun and what are basically speed pills. It’s probably Live and Let Die, because I read it first – it was my first one at the cinema and there were lots of differences. Which is the Fleming Bond novel that influenced your Bond the most? He loves, he cares, he’s honourable, he’s incorruptible, and I love that he’s a complex character. There’s no point taking 1952 passions because they don’t exist any more – thankfully, a lot of them. You could take 1952 passions or you could just transpose them to modern passions. I kind of lifted from Fleming Bond’s ambiguity, conflict and passions.
Barbara said today that Fleming called him “a shadow”. And what is life without love? Fleming was very ambiguous about Bond. What do you think about Fleming’s work and the challenge for an actor of imparting some genuine human feeling and emotion in the material? What do you think of my attempt in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service? It’s one of the best movies, because it had a love story. Daniel, we both made our 007 debuts in films (unusually for the series) based closely on Ian Fleming’s source novels.
