No Time To Die, Daniel Craig’s final appearance as James Bond, is out at the end of September. Here are some fascinating facts about 007.
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Weird stuff you probably didn’t know about James Bond
No Time To Die, which will be Daniel Craig’s final appearance as secret agent James Bond, has been beset by pandemic-related delays. But it was recently announced that the latest edition of the long-running franchise will finally hit box offices on September 30th. With that in mind, we thought we’d share some fascinating facts about the super spy. They might not shake you, but they should at least stir a little interest.
Daniel Craig is the ugliest James Bond
Don’t shoot the messenger, but the outgoing Bond actor is technically the least attractive man to have played the role. The ancient Greeks came up with the Golden Ratio of Beauty, which supposedly defines physical perfection in mathematical form. And of all the actors to have played 007 to date, Craig is the one who least conforms to the rule.
Although we have absolutely no idea why, a plastic surgeon named Julian De Silva carried out the study. Dr. De Silva found that Craig had the least symmetrical features, “because he has very thin lips, a bulbous nose and his face is very wide.”
007 is absolutely deadly
According to the popular Screen Rant website, James Bond has killed a total of 597 people across the entire 24 movie franchise. That’s a frankly astounding kill rate. You can see why they gave him a license to kill. Surely with the release of No Time To Die, that number is destined to breach the 600 barrier.
James Bond has a gambling strategy named after him
In the James Bond book Casino Royale, 007 sits down to enjoy a little roulette. When doing so, he bets in a very unusual way. He places £14 on the high numbers (19 to 36), £5 on the 13 to 18 line and £1 on the number 0.
Bond feels that this method will help to overcome the casino’s advantage, giving him the best possible chance of winning. Fans of the Ian Fleming novel have subsequently taken the strategy to real life casinos, christening it the ‘James Bond System’.
If you’d like to try the James Bond roulette strategy out for yourself, check out a comparison site for online casinos. Here you can quickly identify which sites legally offer online gambling and which deposit methods are accepted. You’ll also find out where the best registration bonuses are, so that you’ll be able to play with bonus money.
Casino Royale possesses a Guinness World Record
Sticking with the Casino Royale theme, did you know that the film actually holds a Guinness World Record? In the movie, Bond’s iconic Aston Martin DBS is involved in a spectacular crash. During filming, the crew completely wrote off three of these vehicles, worth an estimated $300,000 each.
In the process of capturing the scene, the team accidentally set a new world record for “most barrel rolls assisted by a cannon”. The car completed seven full rolls. This is just one of many bizarre and obscure facts about Casino Royale.
There’s also an interesting sidebar to this story. As a result of his time working on the Bond movies, Daniel Craig has a long-standing arrangement with Aston Martin. He is not allowed to help himself to any Aston Martin car, as is sometimes reported. But he does have an agreement which allows him to test drive their vehicles.
James Bond is boring
Our hero constantly finds himself in an array of sticky situations, surrounded by beautiful women, explosions and fights. The life of an MI6 agent is apparently anything but dull. But Bond’s creator Ian Fleming actually intended 007 to be quite boring.
The author is quoted as saying, “I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find. Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure. An anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.”
Fleming actually borrowed the name from a book he owned about West Indian birds. Written by the ornithologist James Bond, it had been published by the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1936. This particular Bond is an American, from Philadelphia to be precise. Sadly, he is no longer with us, having passed away in 1989 at the age of 89.