The James Bond rumour mill is officially in overdrive, with each passing day seemingly bringing forth yet another contender for the coveted title. With all the attention on who will play 007, the conversation surrounding the casting of another very pivotal role in the franchise has been comparatively very quiet.
The Bond villain is arguably as important a role to get right as the eponymous spy himself, with menacing turns from actors like Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale), Sean Bean (GoldenEye) and Javier Bardem (Skyfall) helping to raise their respective films to great heights.
While the various rumoured frontrunners for Bond – such as James Lowden and Callum Turner – are keeping predictably schtum on their chances, there are a handful of actors who have been very vocal about their desire to play 007’s adversary, with Bill Skarsgård the latest to throw his hat in the ring.
Below are the stars who have petitioned to play Bond’s adversary…
Bill Skarsgård
During an appearance on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, the Swedish actor poured water on previous reports that he had been tapped to audition for Bond – but did reveal that he’d be keen to take on the role of a singular film’s main villain.
“[I] just want to go in and do one Mads Mikkelsen villain,” said the actor, referencing Mikkelsen’s character, Le Chiffre, in Casino Royale.
“For a villain, it would have to be something that felt original to me, that was something that I hadn’t done before. I feel, kind of, spent with those things. But there are villains [that] could be really fun in different ways and if it’s the right kind.”
Skarsgard as a Bond villain makes perfect sense, with the actor having turned in chilling performances as Pennywise the killer clown in IT (2017), a ruthless crime lord in John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), a supernatural being with a violent side in Hemlock Grove (2013-2015) and a monstrous vampire in Nosferatu.
Saorise Ronan
The Oscar-winning star of Atonement and Little Women is serious about wanting to break bad, expressing her interest in playing a Bond villain more than once. In 2024, Ronan told Vanity Fair: “I will stand by really wanting to play a Bond villain, which I will say again and again. Because anytime that I’ve gotten a chance to play someone who’s a little bit evil, I just love it. And I think it would be really fun to do that again.”
She added: “I do think there’s something kind of cool about having a female villain who wants to take him down and doesn’t just want to fall in love with him.”
Ronan doubled down in another interview this August, during which she assured Empire that she was “dead serious” about her Bond villain ambitions. “I think it would be really interesting, having a young female villain,” she said. “Especially for girls and women, to see someone who can just take all that pent-up anger and direct it somewhere, there’s something interesting in that dramatically. So I would love to do more of that.”
Of course, casting Ronan as the villain opposite her husband, Jack Lowden, as Bond would add an intriguing extra twist to the story.
Barry Keoghan
There was a brief time when Keoghan’s name was linked to the Bond conversation – rumours that were ramped up given that the actor had been working with the next Bond writer Steven Knight on the Peaky Blinders film.
Keoghan himself, however, dismissed those reports earlier this year when he told Radio Times that he doesn’t “fit the criteria” for the dapper spy. In the same interview, however, he did throw his hat in the ring to play the villain. “I’d rather come in and do the villain. The man teasing Bond, that’s more me,” he said.
Keoghan certainly has the acting chops to pull it off. The Dublin-born talent has been celebrated for compelling performances in critically acclaimed films such as Saltburn (2023), in which he played a deceitful university student, The Banshees Of Inisherin (2022), and the Peaky Blinders film, The Immortal Man (2026).
Austin Butler
Similar to Keoghan, Butler was keen to dispel rumours that he was in the running for the Bond role – going so far as to say his casting would be “sacrilegious” because he is American.
“Would I play James Bond? I don’t think that would be a good idea. Because I’m an American. I can do an accent but that would be kind of sacrilegious. Those movies meant so much to me, but I think that it’s gotta be somebody who is from [England].” He added: “Villain? That would be all right. I’d do that.”
I’d wager that anyone who has seen Butler’s villainous turn as a psychopathic weirdo in Dune would be on board with his casting.
Alex Kingston
The star of ER and Doctor Who was one of the first to voice her desire to play Bond in the new iteration, having said so as early as 2021 – the same year Daniel Craig delivered his final performance in No Time To Die. “I’d love to be the villain in a James Bond movie,” Kingston told Radio Times. “I’d love to be the female villain. Because they never have female villains, I mean the big one, they’ve never had a woman being the villain.”
Echoing Ronan’s sentiment, Kingston went on to say: “I want to be a villain who actually does not find James Bond sexy at all, doesn't succumb to his charms at all, and is the real villain of the piece as well, his real nemesis.”
While there have been a handful of female villains in the Bond universe – including Lotte Lenya as Colonel Rosa Klebb and Sophie Marceau as Elektra King – the primary antagonists are overwhelmingly played by male actors.
Henry Cavill
The famously charming British actor had reached the final stages of auditions for the 007 role before losing the part to Daniel Craig. Now, though, he’d much rather play the antagonist instead.
“I didn’t turn the role down – it just wasn’t the right time,” he said earlier this year. “What actor wouldn’t love to be Bond? But at 42, I’d probably be considered a bit old to start now. I would love to be a Bond villain, though [...] if it was the right character, I think that would be fascinating to explore.”
Richard Armitage
The Hobbit actor is keen to leave The Shire behind and join the Bond universe instead, preferably as a villain. In an interview back in 2023, Armitage said that while 007 is an “amazing role”, he’s “more likely to be tempted towards playing the villain”.
He has form playing bad guys, having previously portrayed the calculating henchman in Robin Hood, and a Nazi spy in Captain America: The First Avenger. Perhaps most pertinent to his Bond ambitions, however, is his role as an MI5 officer in Spooks.
David Dastmalchian
Of all those to publicly campaign for the Bond villain role, perhaps Oppenheimer star David Dastmalchian has been the most passionate.
The actor – who also starred in Marvel’s Ant-Man and The Suicide Squad – said in a 2023 interview: “Trust me when I say that I can bring something to an enemy of 007, whether he or she or they be played in a way that no one has ever seen Bond brought to life before, which is, of course, the way that you guys always do it.
“I think there’s no one to push Bond to the limits of their capabilities the way that I could, and I would love to do it. So there's my pitch to them. I can't wait for them to read this.”
He said: “So whoever is reading this, take it as a sign. You were meant to be reading this line at this moment as you're thinking about the future of what you guys are doing with the franchise."
Ke Huy Quan
The actor may be most famous for his Oscar-winning role as the supportive and sweet husband of Michelle Yeoh’s character in Everything Everywhere All At Once, but now he is keen to show another, more sinister, side to himself.
“I would love to play a bad guy. Like a Bond villain,” Quan told Empire last year. “Or the kind of thing Hugh Grant does in Heretic. I want to go out of my comfort zone and just play this diabolical, really bad guy. That would be a lot of fun.”
Harriet Walker
Throughout her career, Harriet Walker has turned in some superbly devious performances, including as the icy and pragmatic mother of Succession and the ruthless assassin in Killing Eve. If it was up to her, she’d be upping the ante even more as a Bond villain.
Asked back in 2020, even before Craig exited the Aston Martin, whether playing 007’s nemesis would appeal to her, she replied: “Actually it would. Yes, of course. Of course it would. It'd be funny.”
Comparing the tone of Bond to that of Killing Eve, she said: “There’s always a twinkle in the eye. I don’t really think I want to get into a very serious character where you’ve got to get really psychologically involved in somebody who's a murderer, I think that would be very horrible.
“Whereas this is sort of playful, there’s always a playful tone in Killing Eve. Even though dangerous things happen, it’s always on a pretty fantastical level, and that makes it entertainment. And, for me, Bond villains always have a twinkle in their eye, you know.”
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