Theo James dubs self too old to play James Bond

“I’m definitely too old now, for one,” the White Lotus and The Gentlemen star says in a new profile in British GQ. This, of course, isn’t really true, and writer Xuanlin Tham says so. For example, Daniel Craig was 42 when Casino Royale premiered, as was Pierce Brosnan when Golden Eye opened. 

But you also get the sense from reading the profile that this is more of a polite excuse than a real rationale. He says playing Bond “would be an example of a place you could never come back from.” This comes after an extended conversation about James’ experience in YA adaptation Divergent, which led to him and his father running from fans in the streets of Spain and which is still causing people to interrupt him to ask for selfies during his GQ interview. He rarely mentions Divergent by name, but negatively describes one job where he felt like “an avatar for IP.” In that case, he probably wouldn’t be thrilled to be Bond, especially in the franchise’s Amazon era.