Timothy Dalton

After Roger Moore retired from the Bond series in 1985, the role fell to Timothy Dalton after Pierce Brosnan was unable to get out of his contract for the television series Remington Steele.

Born in south Wales on March 21, 1944, Dalton’s family had a history of show business, as both grnadfathers were vaudevillians. After leaving school, he joined the National Youth Theatre for 3 summers and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art for 2 years before joining the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1966.

He broke into films in 1968 playing the King of France in The Lion in Winter, which starred Peter O’Toole, Katharine Hepburn and Antony Hopkins. Stepping into famous actors’ shoes then became a career pattern, as he took on roles made famous by Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, and finally Sean Connery and Roger Moore.

Dalton’s first Bond movie was The Living Daylights, released in 1987. Dalton’s Bond was more realsitic, gritty charactereization of Agent 007, a return to Connery’s style and away from Moore’s. His second Bond movie, Licence to Kill, was released in 1989. A lawsuit prevented any Bond movies from being made for several years, during which rumors surfaced that Dalton was going to be replaced. In April 1994, Dalton officially resigned from the role.

Dalton has continued to act since he resigned from the Bond series, including stepping into the shoes of Clark Gable when he protrayed Rhett Butler in the TV mini-series Scarlett, the sequel to Gone With the Wind. His first son was born in 1997 by his girlfriend, Ukranian actress/model Oksana Grigorieva, and little else is known of his private life.