James Bond Is My Favorite Franchise, and Here's How I'd Rank All 6 Actors

1 day ago 3

Published Feb 9, 2026, 2:21 PM EST

Samuel is Collider's List Flex Editor (previously Lead List Editor), which means he's pretty much always hovering around Collider's List department. A writing and editing automaton based in Nashville, Tennessee, and sometimes Los Angeles, Samuel has been working in entertainment journalism for over 10 years.

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Over six full decades since Sean Connery's debut in Dr. No, James Bond remains so popular and pervasive throughout culture that it's, frankly, a no-brainer to call Ian Fleming's British spy the greatest and most enduring movie character in all of history. Played by six actors across Eon's historic film franchise, the character has changed, evolved and adapted to suit a changing world as well as the strengths of the different performers playing him, but several key and compelling traits of Bond have remained the same: he's always in mortal danger; he can never trust anyone. Even in his deadliest circumstances, he has jokes. His most defining character trait is his loyalty. Cinema's greatest hero has a reach throughout culture and history that's hard to overstate, and pretty much everyone has wanted to be him or be with him. For some of us, it's both.

As a millennial and a child of the '90s, I grew up in one of Bond's true golden eras, where Pierce Brosnan's wonderful and exciting debut, GoldenEye, gave the franchise a shot in the arm that carried Bond through a string of successful movies, as well as video games and other media. This is my favorite franchise without question, and my favorite character in fiction. I've read Fleming, and I've owned these movies on every format since VHS through the recent 4ks. The following is my personal ranking of all six Bond actors. I should probably make one thing really clear before moving forward with what some may perceive as wild hot takes: I like all these actors, and I enjoy every Bond era. Even with that said, ranking the actors actually comes quite easily for me.

6 Daniel Craig

2006-2021

Daniel Craig gave one of the best performances in the entire franchise in Casino Royale, and the movie was so great it possibly set the rest of Craig's era, spanning a record 15 years, up at a disadvantage. The darker, more grounded and character-rich take on Bond worked splendidly with a great novel as its source, but the films that followed could only attempt to copy what worked about Casino, to mixed results. Skyfall was a record box-office hit, and a major moment for the franchise as it reached 50 years. Craig is great in it, too, but even Skyfall is a tad overrated, a gorgeously realized blockbuster that's more enjoyable the less you scrutinize the plot.

A tonal mess with unconvincing romance and an awful villain, Spectre is one of the series' low points, and Craig's performance goes in and out there. The entire era is done a grave disservice by the final act of Craig's final Bond film, No Time to Die, where Bond is killed in a lamentably convoluted fashion that the movie simply doesn't earn. I enjoy and rewatch every James Bond era on film, but this is the only James Bond era that left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It's been nearly half a decade, and the taste is still there. I don't think it's going anywhere.

5 Roger Moore

1973-1985

Roger Moore gets ragged on a fair amount, but a lot of people are unaware of just how popular the former Saint star was in the role, and for how long. His debut in the dark yet campy blaxploitation homage Live and Let Die was one of the highest grossing films of 1973, and Moore would eventually reinvent a lighter take on the character that appealed to movie-going masses, even if the outrageousness of something like Moonraker understandably turns Bond purists off a bit.

The real blemish here is The Man With the Golden Gun, arguably the worst Eon Bond film, with a very uneasy and unassured lead performance. On the rare occasion that Connery's Bond hit a woman, it was upsetting because nobody actually likes seeing such a thing, but audiences generally accepted it as a reality within the context of the stories. When producers asked Moore to try this on for size in Golden Gun, it was upsetting for more reasons than that; Moore is such a good-natured gentleman on-screen and off, and he just couldn't pull that kind of thing off. Still, the next Bond movie was The Spy Who Loved Me, a giddy sci-fi near-masterpiece where producers returned to form and Moore made the character entirely his own. He'd remain the people's Bond for a record seven Eon entries.

4 Timothy Dalton

1987-'89

Timothy Dalton initially, respectably turned down the role of James Bond in the late '60s, telling the producers he thought he was too young for the role (in his early 20s, surely he was). He'd later relieve Roger Moore in a duology of Bond entries that become more well-liked and praised as underrated (something similar can be said of Dalton's performances) as time goes by. Dalton is widely noted as the most book-accurate version of the character, which makes sense because he's the only actor who read all of Ian Fleming's books.

Dalton has a few moments of woodenness in his debut, The Living Daylights, but it's otherwise a great and grounded performance, with a focus on a sweet romance opposite Maryam d'Abo and less sleeping around (Dalton's turn as Bond coincided with the peak of AIDS crisis, and Bond's sexual antics were dialed back considerably for at least the two entries). Licence to Kill is god-tier Bond, and Dalton's sewing of seeds of mistrust in Robert Davi's drug lord Franz Sanchez, a plot inspired by Yojimbo, makes for some of the best acting in the entire series. The only reason I have Dalton this low is because there are three Bond actors I love even more; it's that simple.

3 George Lazenby

1969

So, this is probably the hottest take on the list aside from perhaps ranking Craig last, but this is my list, and over time, I've grown to adore George Lazenby as James Bond. Surely this has a lot do with the fact that he's the star of what I consider to be the best James Bond movie (Christopher Nolan and Steven Soderbergh agree, so it's not just me), but the Australian model and inexperienced actor's performance, rough edges and all, is captivating. He got the part after impressing the producers with his fight skills, and he's far more sensitive and romantic than Connery, and has terrific, sensitive chemistry with Diana Rigg in a tragic love story that largely defines the character.

A few moments in the performance are cringe, mostly quips that the actor is simply too stiff to totally sell. Some certainly complain about the dubbing of his Sir Hilary Bray alter ego, but honestly it's never bothered me. You could easily make the case for this being any James Bond actor's finest "era," because Lazenby starred in only one film—and it's pretty much perfect. This version of James Bond carries an emotional weight with him that's otherwise largely absent from the franchise. And because he left after one (great) film, there's an undeniable mystique to George Lazenby as James Bond.

2 Pierce Brosnan

1995-2002

After Licence to Kill disappointed at the box office and the series floundered for six years amidst legal drama, the Broccoli family heirs had to hit a home run or the franchise was likely cooked. Fortunately, 1995's GoldenEye became the highest-grossing Bond movie of its time and paved the way for the aforementioned multimedia renaissance.

Brosnan was long-courted for the role of Bond, and once had to turn it down due to contractual obligations with Remington Steele. From GoldenEye through even the overall reviled Die Another Day, Brosnan is the only Bond actor who was simply flawless every moment he was on-screen. He always had a perfect grip on just how seriously to take things, and how much the humor and absurdity could come into play. What's maybe the best thing about Brosnan? He loved being James Bond. He very clearly loved everything about playing the character, which makes his tenure all the more endearing, and his premature departure all the more devastating.

1 Sean Connery

1962-1983

Maybe the chief reason Sean Connery was cast in Eon's first Bond picture is that Dana Broccoli, wife of Albert "Cubby," saw the actor in the forgettable live-action Disney musical Darby O'Gill and the Little People, noting how darkly attractive and "panther-like" the performer was. "There's our Bond," she's on record as saying very early on. Connery's performance arrived so fully formed, adding humor that wasn't on the page but was necessary on-screen, that author Ian Fleming retroactively gave the character a Scottish heritage on the page. Connery built upon the performance in the plot-heavy From Russia With Love, and everything peaked in Goldfinger. Connery is so sexy and appealing, and wryly, dryly hilarious that the darker elements of the Bond character only endeared him more to us.

Was the tenure, or even Connery's performances within it, perfect? Absolutely not. You Only Live Twice has aged like milk that never got refrigerated, and Connery appears entirely checked out and miserably unhappy in it. Non-Eon, non-canon Never Say Never Again is one of only two James Bond films I find to be pretty much unwatchable, along with the other non-Eon picture, 1967's Casino Royale. But nothing, nothing, could ever take away from the fact that Sean Connery crafted a character so unforgettable he's consistently remained a cultural giant.