The Multi-Dojo: Mark Strong Almost Played a Bond Villain, but Daniel Craig Helped Him Blow the Audition

Welcome to The Multi-Dojo, where we look at the movies that almost happened, the actors who nearly played iconic roles and the alternate Hollywood timelines that disappeared before audiences ever got to see them. Sometimes the other version sounds fascinating. Sometimes it sounds like a disaster narrowly avoided. Most of the time, it leaves us wondering how one decision could have changed everything that followed.

This time, Mark Strong enters The Multi-Dojo with the story of how one badly timed night out with Daniel Craig cost him the chance to play a James Bond villain.

There are bad auditions, and then there are auditions you ruin by getting drunk with the man who will eventually become James Bond.

Years before Daniel Craig put on the tuxedo, ordered a martini and started beating people to death with whatever bathroom fixture happened to be nearby, he was simply one of Mark Strong’s closest friends. They had worked together on Our Friends in the North, shared an apartment—or flat, as our British friends call it—for a while and developed the kind of friendship where one of them could apparently look at the other on the night before a major audition and decide that getting hammered was still a perfectly responsible option.

Strong had learned the material, memorized the dialogue and felt so confident that he decided to celebrate before actually getting the job. This is rarely a good idea, but it becomes an especially bad one when the celebration involves Daniel Craig and enough alcohol to erase an entire Bond villain from your brain.

Strong arrived at the audition severely hungover, began the scene and discovered that the dialogue had completely vanished. The harder he tried to remember it, the worse the audition became. Strong later called the experience excruciating and admitted that he had simply blown it. He jokingly blamed Craig, although he clearly understands that his friend didn’t force the drinks into him or personally remove the lines from his head during the night.

Craig just happened to be standing nearby when Strong made one of those decisions that feels completely reasonable until the following morning arrives and demands an explanation.

Been there myself, although none of my hangovers have ever cost me the chance to threaten Pierce Brosnan inside an ice palace. At least outside of the interwebs.

Before Either of Them Knew What Was Coming

At the time, Brosnan was still James Bond and Craig was simply another working actor having a night out with one of his best friends. Die Another Day would be released in 2002, Brosnan would leave the franchise and Craig would officially become the next 007 three years later.

That timing turns an embarrassing audition story into something much better. Strong was trying to enter the franchise as a villain while the man drinking beside him was still years away from inheriting the entire thing. Neither of them knew how closely their careers would eventually circle Bond, and one premature celebration quietly shut down Strong’s path before it ever began.

Craig went on to redefine the character in Casino Royale, while Strong spent the next two decades becoming one of the most dependable villains and authority figures in movies. Somehow, the man who has always looked prepared to explain an international conspiracy from the moment he enters a room never received another chance to bother James Bond.

Mark Strong as Gustav Graves

Gustav Graves was ultimately played by Toby Stephens, who brought the character the smug confidence of a man who had recently inherited a country club and immediately started deciding which families were no longer allowed access to the pool.

The character begins as a wealthy British businessman and fencing champion before being revealed as Colonel Tan-Sun Moon, a North Korean military officer who used experimental gene therapy to completely alter his appearance. He also owns an ice palace, wears a mechanical battle suit and controls a giant orbital laser named Icarus, so subtlety had already packed its belongings and left the franchise well before Strong entered the conversation.

Strong probably wouldn’t have made Graves any less ridiculous, but he might have made him considerably more threatening. He has always been able to stand quietly in an expensive suit and make everyone else in the room feel as though they have overlooked something important and are about to die because of it. He wouldn’t need to announce that he was dangerous. His face had already checked those boxes.

Stephens played Graves as a vain, theatrical bastard who enjoyed every second of being richer and more important than Bond. Strong likely would have gone colder and more controlled, giving us a villain who felt dangerous even when the movie around him was firing lasers at minefields and asking Judi Dench to maintain a straight face.

Either approach could work. Only one of them would have given Mark Strong a sword fight with James Bond.

The Mark Strong Problem

The strangest part of Strong losing a Bond villain role is that he then spent the rest of his career proving that he was almost scientifically designed to play one.

He became Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes, Frank D’Amico in Kick-Ass, Sir Godfrey in Robin Hood, Sinestro in Green Lantern and Dr. Sivana in Shazam!. He has played criminals, spies, military officers, intelligence officials and a long succession of men who wear extremely expensive coats while calmly explaining why somebody else is about to have a very bad afternoon.

Hollywood eventually decided that Strong should either run a secret organization, uncover one or destroy it from the inside. Yet the Bond franchise never circled back, despite Strong appearing in enough espionage movies that he should have accidentally wandered into MI6 at least once.

He even became Merlin in the Kingsman movies, meaning he found his way into a completely different British spy franchise while Bond continued pretending not to notice him. He was right there: bald, intimidating, perfectly dressed and already familiar with Daniel Craig’s drinking habits.

What else did they need?

Could Mark Strong Have Saved Die Another Day?

No. Let’s not get ridiculous here.

Die Another Day has an invisible Aston Martin, gene-replacement therapy, a giant palace made of ice and a sequence where Bond surfs a collapsing glacier with a parachute and a piece of airplane wreckage. It feels like somebody gave a fourteen-year-old unlimited money and told him to include every cool idea he had ever scribbled in his dream journal.

You could insert Marlon Brando, Daniel Day-Lewis and the digitally resurrected ghost of Laurence Olivier into the movie, and Bond would still eventually drive an invisible car through a melting ice building. Strong couldn’t have saved Die Another Day from being Die Another Day, but he might have given its central villain enough bravado to keep parts of the movie attached to Earth.

That is one of Strong’s greatest abilities as an actor. He can take material that is already halfway into orbit and deliver it with enough conviction that you briefly accept the nonsense. Put him in a tailored suit, hand him a giant space laser and let him speak quietly until he suddenly erupts, and the audience may forget for several minutes that he is about to fire that giant space laser at the planet.

That is not nothing.

Inside the Multi-Dojo

In another universe, Strong stops after a couple of drinks, wakes up remembering his own name and walks into the audition ready to play Gustav Graves. He gets the role, becomes Brosnan’s final Bond villain and joins a franchise that his closest friend will inherit only a few years later.

Once Craig becomes Bond, the questions begin immediately. Could Strong return as another villain? Could Graves somehow survive? Could he play an MI6 official, a corrupt minister or some completely different bald man sitting in a dark room while calmly describing the end of civilization?

Maybe Strong eventually faces Craig in Skyfall or Spectre. Their long friendship would give every confrontation an easy sense of history, even if the audience knew nothing about it. Then again, perhaps they would look at each other during the first take, remember the night that destroyed the original audition and laugh until Sam Mendes threw both of them off the set.

Either way, there is a version of Bond history in which Mark Strong remembers his lines and gets the part he seemed destined to play. It might not make Die Another Day a good movie, but watching him stand inside that ice palace and try to explain the invisible car with a straight face would make it a much more interesting one.