You know him best as Homelander in the hit Amazon Prime Video series The Boys, but twenty years ago, Anthony Starr was better known for his guest roles on Xena and the drama Mercy Peak. Back in 2005, around the time that the James Bond bosses at EON were looking for someone to replace Pierce Brosnan after Die Another Day, several familiar men auditioned for the coveted role of Agent 007.
Before Daniel Craig was cast, one of those actors was Henry Cavill, who was, briefly, the favorite of Casino Royale director Martin Campbell. Avatar star Sam Worthington was in the mix there, too. But perhaps the most surprising name on this very short list was Starr, well before his fame in The Boys. In the same series of apparently leaked audition tapes that included the lost, eyebrow-raising Cavill audition, YouTuber Ron South has also dropped an audition tape featuring Starr, trying out for Bond, twenty years ago.
Like the other leaked 2005 Bond auditions, Starr is performing a scene from 1995's GoldenEye in which James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is in a casino, playing Baccarat with the villainous Xenia Onatopp. And unlike the Cavill audition, Starr's reading of this scene embraces the quirky, more humorous side of Bond, much closer to the way Brosnan played the scene in 1995. In the leaked video, Starr is charming, casual, and certainly close to the idea of what an early aughts Bond could have been had Daniel Craig not gotten the part.
But, because Craig did end up becoming Bond (and transforming our idea of what the franchise could be along the way), the venerable spy series went in a slightly more somber direction. Despite their very different interpretations of the role, it is interesting that both Starr and Cavill become famous for wearing capes after they lost the part of Bond. Today we might think of Starr as better suited to play a Bond villain than Bond himself. But twenty years ago, things could have been very, very different.
Related: Who Will Be the New James Bond After Daniel Craig?
from Men's Journal https://ift.tt/DsSaqmE
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