9 Actors We Want as James Bond After Daniel Craig

Over the course of more than 50 years and 24 different films, James Bond has been portrayed by six different actors and soon someone new will take over the role.

It was announced in early 2018 that Daniel Craig will portray the English spy one last time in the upcoming 25th Bond film, slated to be released in 2019.

This will make Craig the actor with the second most number of films as Bond, trailing behind Roger Moore, who played agent 007 seven times between 1973 and 1985.

While there is nothing official on who will take over the iconic role after Craig, there are plenty of highly qualified candidates.

Below, we’ve compiled a list of actors who embody the right qualities to do the roll justice. Scroll down to see which stars we think would make a great 007!

Tom Hiddleston

What you’ve seen him in: The Avengers, Marvel’s Thor films, Kong: Skull Island.

Rumored to be on the short-list of actors that Bond producers are considering, its not hard to see why Tom Hiddleston would be a good fit.

He’s dashing and charming, and could bring back a certain type of charisma that once livened the Bond films of 007, like actors Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan.

Hiddleston may be most well-known for playing Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it is performances like the ones he gave in the 2015 film High-Rise and the 2016 mini-series The Night Manager that serve as evidence of why he would be a perfect James Bond.

Michael Fassbender

What you’ve seen him in: Inglourious Basterds, X-Men: First Class, Alien: Covenant.

Michael Fassbender is maybe not the very first name you would think of for Bond, but once you hear it you can’t shake it.

He is suave and handsome, and would very likely fit well into the new era of Bond, which has seen a more visceral take on the character.

While his films have more misses than hits lately, Fassbender has still proved that he has longevity and could very easily carry the franchise.

Idris Elba

What you’ve seen him in: American Gangster, Star Trek Beyond, Marvel’s Thor films.

Elba is, without question, the name that has come up the most during speculation on who might be the next Bond, and with good reason. He is perfect for the role.

He is incredibly debonair and dripping in confidence, attributes very important to any Bond actor.

If you have yet to watch his BBC detective series Luther, you can check it out now on Netflix.

Nicholas Hoult

What you’ve seen him in: Mad Max: Fury Road, Jack the Giant Slayer, X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Arguably, Nicholas Hoult is younger than one would imagine James Bond to be, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Having a younger, sophisticated Bond could be a good way to keep audiences coming back year of year for new adventures of 007. Sure, one of the draws of Bond has always been that he was a middle-aged-ish spy, but there’s no harm in trying something new, even just once or twice.

You can catch Hoult now in the Netflix film Sand Castle, which co-stars Henry Cavill, Logan Marshall-Green, Tommy Flanagan, Glen Powell, Beau Knapp and Neil Brown Jr.

Matt Smith

What you’ve seen him in: The Crown, Doctor Who, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Matt Smith is easily most well-known for his role as The 11th Doctor on the BBC series Doctor Who. More recently, he took on the role of Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, in the Netflix biopic series The Crown.

The 35-year-old is just about the right age for playing Bond and, considering Craig has been doing it for over a decade, he would certainly have time to come into his own in the role.

Smith does not have a ton of action roles in his repertoire to show how he would handle those types of scenes, he recently put out an action horror film titled Patient Zero which will likely give audiences a better idea of how he would handle playing an action hero.

Sam Claflin

What you’ve seen him in: The Hunger Games films, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Huntsman: Winter’s War.

Claflin is likely to be one of the more unsuspecting name on our list, but he has plenty of qualities that could make him a fantastic 007.

The Ipswitch-born actor is in his early thirties and proved in his Hunger Games role as Finnick Odair that he has the refined chivalry to be Bond.

“Finnick’s an interesting character. At first he feels like a bit of a flirt and there’s a little bit of sexual tension, but really you kind of fall in love with the guy and you see that there’s a real deep emotional side to him,” Francis Lawrence, the director of Catching Fire, once said of Claflin.

“It’s one of the reasons I really hired him in the first place was that it’s where his character goes in the next couple of stories and I just think he did a fantastic job,” he added.

Kit Harington

What you’ve seen him in: Game of Thrones, Pompeii, Gunpowder.

Admit it, Harington was not even on your radar as being a good fit for Bond, but now that you see his name you’re seriously considering it.

He certainly does not jump out as a good fit initially, but that may only be because nearly everything he has done up until now has either been a period piece or a fantasy film.

However, back in 2015 Harington did a film called MI-5, which was a British spy film in which he played, wait for it… a British spy.

Harry Styles

What you’ve seen him in: Dunkirk.

This one will take some convincing, but just hang in there because it is entirely plausible that former One Direction singer Harry Styles could be a could Bond. Eventually.

He’s only done one film so far, the 2017 Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk, but he more than proved he is cut out for a career in acting.

Considering he’s 24 years old and would certainly need more years of acting under his belt to prove he has what it takes, we could very easily see a mid-30s Styles taking on the Bond role after whoever comes directly next.

Letitia Wright

What you’ve seen her in: Marvel’s Black Panther, The Commuter, Black Mirror.

Now this suggestion probably has you quite puzzled, but there is a tangible basis for it.

First off, Wright stole scenes and hearts in the record-setting Black Panther playing Shuri, the sister of T’Challa.

Secondly, both Idris Elba and Barbara Broccoli (a main Bond producer) have said that the next 007 could be black or a woman, or “could be a black woman.” Taking their cue, we felt that Wright would be the perfect fit for a black-female Bond since she also grew up in London.

Much like with Harry Styles, Wright is young and would maybe need a few more years of acting to get to a place where she would be a franchise-carrying Bond, but she could absolutely do it.