In promoting his new memoir, the perfectly titled My Word Is My Bond, 81-year-old actor Roger Moore has come out against the more violent modern conceptualization of the James Bond character. At 12 years, from 1973 to 1985, Moore played Bond for longer than any other actor, and his light-hearted, quippy—some might say cheesy—take on 007 is evident in such series lowpoints as Moonraker and Octopussy. As early as his second Bond adventure, The Man With The Golden Gun, Moore tried to resist toughening up the character, whom he describes as "a lover and a giggler," and in his memoir, he's frank about his distaste for the violence in his final Bond film, A View To A Kill. ("That wasn't Bond," he says.)
In light of that, it should come as no surprise that Moore doesn't approve of the current, two-fisted interpretation of the character, which couldn't be further from his own. While he reserves praise for Daniel Craig, Moore laments the reality that today's audiences demand violence rather than, say, this: