Six Bonds at Home: Archival Photos Chart 007 Actors Off Duty

By Elena Vasquez

Sean Connery first played James Bond in Dr. No in 1962 — and a 1955 photograph taken at his home in England shows the actor seven years before the role made him famous. A new archival photo essay rounds up domestic images of all the men who have played 007, released amid reports that the search for the next Bond has reached final screen tests, with Callum Turner, Jack Lowden and Josh O'Connor among the names linked to the part.

What do the photos show of each Bond?

Sean Connery appears in modest surroundings in the 1955 shot, with little hint of the polished interiors his screen alter ego would frequent. He went on to define the role across six films during the 1960s and early 1970s.

George Lazenby, a former model, prepared for his single Bond appearance with deliberate wardrobe tactics. According to the official Bond website, he bought an unused suit made for Connery and visited his predecessor's barber at the Dorchester to request the same haircut — where producer Cubby Broccoli happened to sit in the neighboring chair. His only outing as 007, the 1969 film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, gave Bond one of his most personal storylines, with Diana Rigg playing his ill-fated bride, Tracy. A Kensington photograph from February 1973 shows Lazenby seated with papers, surrounded by books, records, a guitar, a glass-topped coffee table crowded with a decorative horse's head, and a substantial wooden cabinet. Roger Moore made his Bond debut later that year in Live and Let Die.

Roger Moore was photographed at home reading a dictionary while still a television actor, years before his first on-screen martini. He married Welsh singer Dorothy Squires in 1953; the couple lived primarily at The Mount, a mansion on Wansunt Road in Old Bexley, Kent, divorcing in 1968. A year later he married Luisa Mattioli, and Sherwood House in Denham, near Pinewood Studios, served as their base during his first three Bond films. Moore called the property, in his autobiography, "near London and perfect for a growing family." Its 11 acres included a tennis court, heated swimming pool and greenhouses when the house was advertised for £5 million in 2015 — roughly the price of a dozen average London homes at the time.

Timothy Dalton turned down early consideration for Bond, feeling too young, and reread Fleming's novels when he signed on for The Living Daylights in 1986 to build a more serious interpretation.

Pierce Brosnan posed at his Los Angeles home in June 1983 while making his name in Remington Steele. His Bond connection came through his first wife, actress Cassandra Harris, who appeared in For Your Eyes Only; visiting her on location in Corfu brought him into the producers' orbit. Offered the role in 1986, he was blocked by television commitments and debuted in GoldenEye in 1995. Photographs from 1992 show him playing guitar on the sofa, shooting pool with his eight-year-old son Sean, and entertaining two dogs in the garden — taken a year after Harris died of ovarian cancer.

Painting had become Brosnan's creative outlet during Harris's illness. Trained as a commercial artist before acting, he returned to it in the late 1980s. "I started painting again and out came every colour," he recalled on his website. His dressing room at Leavesden doubled as a studio during GoldenEye.

Which Bond keeps his front door closed?

Daniel Craig represents the most guarded approach to domestic life. His wife, actress Rachel Weisz, told British Vogue in 2012: "I think it's pretty ordinary to think that marriage is private and sacred."

Takeaway: five of the six Bonds opened their homes to the camera; Craig closed his. Whoever passes the final screen tests will inherit both the tuxedo and the scrutiny that comes with it.