Robert Pattinson has auditioned for James Bond – and finally the 007 race is interesting | Sian Cain

Hollywood’s weirdest man has entered the fray and the casting decision that has dragged on and on suddenly feels exciting for the first time Why does anyone want to play James Bond? The franchise seems to spit out its leads, leaving them wrecked and disillusioned. “I’d like to ki

Hollywood’s weirdest man has entered the fray and the casting decision that has dragged on and on suddenly feels exciting for the first time Why does anyone want to play James Bond? The franchise seems to spit out its leads, leaving them wrecked and disillusioned. “I’d like to kill him,” Sean Connery famously said of Bond, that “dull, prosaic English policeman”; it was Daniel Craig who finally managed to do it, a fifth film torturously pulled out of him because Barbara Broccoli agreed to knock him off .

As soon as his Bond took a missile to the bonce, Craig dived right into playing all the oddballs he could get, with Benoit Blanc as palate cleanser. Bond might never be an actor’s most interesting role, but it is always the one that leads the obit. With the auditions for the next Bond under way, reports recently emerged that the official contenders were Jack Lowden, Josh O’Connor, Callum Turner and a mysterious fourth actor who no one seemed to know.

But over the weekend multiple sources confirmed to the Hollywood trades that the mysterious fourth – and fifth – contenders were Robert Pattinson and Nicholas Hoult. Both great actors, but one of them has made a casting decision that has dragged on, and on, and on, suddenly feel genuinely exciting for the first time. Continue reading...