VITAL STATS
DOB: 21 March 1944
Height: 6ft 2”
Eyes: Blue
Age When Cleared For Duty: 43
CASES
The Living Daylights (1987)
Licence To Kill (1989)
DISTINGUISHING FEATURE
Wanted to bring a return to Ian Fleming’s literary blunt instrument, but ended up simply taking the edge off the franchise.
FAVOURITE REQUISITIONS FROM Q
● Exploding key ring
● Exploding toothpaste
● Exploding alarm clock
● Laser gun disguised as a camera
VEHICLES
Aston Martin V8 Vantage and Aston Martin Volante equipped with bullet-proof windows, rocket boosters, missiles and skis (The Living Daylights).
BOND GIRLS: 4
Favourite Occasional CIA operative Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell, Licence To Kill) proves that Bond girls can be more than just pretty faces and nice bums and boobs. Those help, though.
CRIMINAL MASTERMINDS
A feeble bunch. Soviet general Georgi Koskov (Jeroen Krabbé) and American arms dealer Brad Whitaker (Joe Don Baker) aren’t much of a threat in Dalton’s first outing. Better opposition in adventure number two, though, courtesy of Robert Davi’s sneeringly barmy Colombian drug lord, Sanchez.
HENCHMEN
Silent blond killer Necros (Andreas Wisniewski, The Living Daylights) is dreary but Dario (Benicio Del Toro, Licence To Kill) makes up for his lack of metal appendages and killer hats with some general over-the-top viciousness.
IN ACTION
A slide across the border in a cello case in The Living Daylights is the low-point but, in the same film, a fight staged on a cargo net hanging out the back of an in-flight plane is a definite high, in more ways than one.
00 ASSESSMENT: 14 CONFIRMED KILLS
Favourites Crushing an arms dealer under a statue of Wellington (“He met his Waterloo” – The Living Daylights); setting fire to drug baron Sanchez before killing him in an explosion; feeding the treacherous Killifer (Everett McGill) to a shark (both in Licence To Kill).
BEFORE BOND
Was the first 007 to have acted with The Royal Shakespeare Company.
AFTER BOND
Played Lord Asriel in the stage version of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. The film role, however, has gone to new Bond Craig.
SURVEILLANCE TRANSCRIPT
Kara Milovy “You were fantastic. We’re free.”
Bond “Kara, we’re inside a Russian airbase in Afghanistan!” (The Living Daylights)
