Best Known As: James Bond in the 1987 film The Living Daylights
A lean, hard-edged leading man of stage and screen, Timothy Dalton is best known for playing movie superspy James Bond. Classically trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he first appeared on film with Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter (1968). Two decades later Dalton followed Roger Moore in the role of Bond, playing Agent 007 in The Living Daylights (1987). After a second Bond film, License to Kill (1989, with Wayne Newton), he stepped down and was followed in turn by Pierce Brosnan.
Dalton played Rhett Butler in the 1994 TV miniseries Scarlett.
Career Highlights: The Lion in Winter, The Rocketeer, Mary, Queen of Scots
First Major Screen Credit: The Lion in Winter (1968)
Biography
British actor Timothy Dalton has excelled in roles calling for both panache and psychological complexity. His stage training has included stints at the National Youth Theatre, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and the star-making Birmingham Repertory. Dalton's extensive work in the classics with the Royal Shakespeare Company led to his being cast as King Philip of France in the film The Lion in Winter (1968). In 1971, Dalton appeared in Mary, Queen of Scots, simultaneously launching a lengthy romantic involvement with that film's star, Vanessa Redgrave. When Roger Moore quit the James Bond film series in 1986, it looked for a while as though his successor would be television star Pierce Brosnan; instead, the Bond producers made the eleventh-hour decision to cast Dalton as secret agent 007 in The Living Daylights. Though dashing in a tuxedo and more than willing to perform his own stunts, Dalton was more effectively felt in the role of the dastardly movie swashbuckler-cum-Nazi spy in the breezy sci-fi film The Rocketeer (1991).
Dalton would find his niche in the 90's and 2000's appearing in several made-for-TV productions, like 1992's Framed, and 1994's Scarlett, a mini-series based on Gone with the Wind in which Dalton played Rhett Butler. He would go on to appear in several more TV movies, like Hercules and Marple: The Sittaford Mystery. Dalton's also taken on numerous stage roles, notably playing Lord Asriel in the theater production of His Dark Materials in 2004. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
