{"id":490419,"date":"2026-05-18T10:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T10:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/490419\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T10:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T10:22:12","slug":"8-actors-who-turned-down-the-role-of-james-bond-rod-taylor-richard-johnson-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/490419\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Actors who turned down the role of James Bond: Rod Taylor, Richard Johnson, and more"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the biggest box office stars of the 1970s, best known for &#8216;Smokey and the Bandit&#8217; and &#8216;Deliverance&#8217;, Reynolds was approached to replace Sean Connery but declined out of concern that the public would not accept an American in the role. In a 2015 interview with USA Today, he admitted, &#8220;It was a stupid thing to say, I could&#8217;ve done it, and I could&#8217;ve done it well,&#8221; reflecting on a decision he clearly never fully made peace with. It remains one of Hollywood&#8217;s most openly regretted decisions.Burt Reynolds<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest box office stars of the 1970s, best known for &#8216;Smokey and the Bandit&#8217; and &#8216;Deliverance&#8217;, Reynolds was approached to replace Sean Connery but declined out of concern that the public would not accept an American in the role. In a 2015 interview with USA Today, he admitted, &#8220;It was a stupid thing to say, I could&#8217;ve done it, and I could&#8217;ve done it well,&#8221; reflecting on a decision he clearly never fully made peace with. It remains one of Hollywood&#8217;s most openly regretted decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the biggest box office stars of the 1970s, best known for &#8216;Smokey and the Bandit&#8217; and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[11663,18,117,1239,19,17,7391,327,214045,214044],"class_list":["post-490419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-11663","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-hollywood","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-james-bond","tag-movies","tag-richard-johnson","tag-rod-taylor"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}