This was Moore's last Bond film, and high time as he was pushing sixty and having all those 20-year-old girls drool over him was getting ridiculous (to put it politely).
Can any Bond fans tell me if he quit, or was he fired?
I’m guessing he was ‘politely’ informed by the studio. Surely he knew his exit was looming by that point anyway.
RIP Sir Roger 😢
“It had been on my mind for a long time. I became very conscious that I was getting long in the tooth to play the great lover... I was 57 in the last one. You can see I was getting a little scraggy around the neck. It wasn’t because of the physical stuff as I could still play tennis for two hours a day, and do a one-hour workout every morning. Physically I was okay, but facially I started looking... well, the leading ladies were young enough to be my grand-daughter, and it becomes disgusting.”
shareWell, fit he might have been but I remember the last time I viewed A View to a Kill that some of his fight scenes looked a little dodgy. He seemed stiff and sluggish. Moore's an engaging, charismatic actor, but if he was physically up for the role in '85, they did a poor job of showing it.
share> and it becomes disgusting.”
Well old boy, one man's disgusting is another man's .... ??
I think Moore was expecting every Bond film he did in the 80s to be his last one. From what I've heard from Moore over the years Cubby Broccoli was the one asking him back, not vice versa. The simple fact is the Moore Bond films did quite well at the box office. Of course, that's only Moore's side of the story. I actually think it would have been far better if Dalton had begun his tenure in 1981 with For Your Eyes Only. He would have be able to establish himself as a Bond if he had gotten involved while the series was still riding high.
sharehe left cause he was old af.
Moore himself said it in an interview 'he felt Bond should be a younger guy, not 103 like me'
I don't follow the Bond movies but my college professor knows everything about the Bond films. For your eyes only was supposed to be his last. But after Connery was coming back in 83 with Never say never again, the other studio felt they needed to bring Moore back in order to compete against it. Moore came back in Octopussy and it beat out the Connery film by a wide margin. So that allowed Moore to come back for this last film before the studio needed to go in a younger direction
sharemillsey72, yes this narrative makes a lot of sense.
For Your Eyes Only acknowledges an older, more mature Bond and should/would have worked really well as Moore’s exit. But with the pressure of Connery’s return, you can understand why they wanted Moore back - he was ageing but bankable and laid claim to the highest grossing film in the series with the relatively recent Moonraker. After Octopussy came out on top, they probably thought to scare off any more competition for good so rolled him out for one more with AVTAK.
FYEO should have been his last one. But, from a business angle, you can get why he was kept on for the next two.
The way I read it years ago, Moore was already done but after juggling several options in the air (including Dalton), the studio ended up begging him to come back for one more. And Moore thought the script was terrible. He was particularly disgusted with Walken's villain. Pretty much a paycheck movie for him.
shareHe left the role. The only actor who didn’t leave voluntarily was Brosnan.
shareI saw an interview with Brosnan, talking about his Bond years. He was absolutely thrilled to get the role of Bond, even if it left him typecast for a long time.
He's had a long and solid career, but Bond was his peak and I can see he might not have wanted to leave.
His contract wasn’t renewed because they wanted to make a “dark, gritty, reboot” to bank off the success of Batman Begins which is why they wanted Craig.
share