James Bond's role was first proposed as female?

A woman was reportedly in talks to lead the James Bond role, 50 years prior when Lashana Lynch briefly played the 007 role in No Time to Die, as per an upcoming biography on the Bond author.

Nicholas Shakespeare wrote the biography of Ian Fleming, titled Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, in which Shakespeare revealed that Gregory Ratoff producer of the original Casino Royale had imagined a woman in the lead role.

Ratoff had tried to make a film adaptation of Casino Royale during the 1950s and considered Oscar-winner Susan Hayward for the female James Bond.

According to IndieWire, Shakespeare wrote in autobiography, “Since the mid-1950s, many well-known actors had been approached.”

He continued, “Gregory Ratoff had the arresting idea of having Bond played by a woman, Susan Hayward.”

In 2012 screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. who was hired to write a script for Ratoff told Variety that he and Ratoff thought of making Bond a female.

He said, “Frankly, we thought he was kind of unbelievable and as I recall, even kind of stupid.”

Semple told the outlet, “So Gregory thought the solution was to make Bond a woman, ‘Jane Bond’ if you will, and he even had a plan to cast Susan Hayward in the role.”

For those unversed, Hayward was a five-time Oscar nominee for best actress and won the Academy Award for her role in 1958’s I Want to Live!

The idea behind casting a female for the Bond’s role arose after the two Bond films Thunderball and Casino Royale received poor reviews.

As reported by Variety Fleming’s first choice for James Bond was Richard Burton, who turned down the role.

Fleming also considered many other male actors for the role including Peter Finch, Trevor Howard, Cary Grant, Dick Bogarde, Rex Harrison, Richard Todd, Michael Redgrave, Patrick McGoohan, and Richard Johnson.

“We tried 20 or 30. No major actor would play the part for more than one picture and we couldn’t set up a deal with a distributor without commitment from a main actor,” Fleming’s film agent Robert Fenn told Shakespeare for the book.

But when Sean Connery took the role of James Bond it was a hit on the big screen and Fleming was reportedly shocked “because [Connery] couldn’t speak the Queen’s English.” Fenn recalled to Shakespeare, Variety reported.

Fenn told Shakespeare, “Fleming said, ‘He’s not my idea of Bond at all, I just want an elegant man, not this roughneck.’”

James Bond's role aside from Connery has also been played by Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig.

Fleming’s autobiography Ian Fleming: The Complete Man will be published by HarperCollins on April 9.