Callum Turner is strongly rumoured to succeed Daniel Craig as the next James Bond. Photo / Getty Images
Rising star Callum Turner impressed in TV series Masters of the Air and the Harry Potter spin-off film series Fantastic Beasts and he’s also enjoyed a boost to his profile because of his romance with pop singer Dua Lipa.
But the English actor might soon be experiencing a whole new level of stardom: Turner is strongly rumoured to succeed Daniel Craig as the next James Bond.
The bookies are now backing Turner, 35, to star in the next movie, which will be directed by Denis Villeneuve (Dune) and written by Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight. Bookies William Hill recently cut his odds from 5/2 to 7/4, putting him ahead of rivals such as Henry Cavill, Theo James and Harris Dickinson and edging him closer to Aaron Taylor-Johnson. So, is there really a dinner jacket, a fast car, a martini and a megalomaniac villain in Turner’s future?
Savvy odds-makers may have been tipped off by Turner holidaying this summer in Jamaica with Dua Lipa, and quite possibly spending some time at a certain GoldenEye resort, which Dua Lipa has stayed at previously. The resort, on Oracabessa Bay, was once author Ian Fleming’s beloved estate, and it was at GoldenEye that he wrote many of his Bond novels. Several of the movies also filmed nearby, including Dr No.
There is no finer spot for a budding Bond actor to connect to the series’ rich history – while also preparing for any future ocean-based scenes, such as fending off your enemies while scuba diving, or emerging from the waves in fetching swim trunks, as Craig memorably did in Casino Royale.
Dua Lipa posted an image on Instagram of Turner wearing a snorkel, so he’s definitely ready for marine action. But proximity to Fleming’s Caribbean getaway is just one of many reasons why Turner seems ideally suited to breathe new life into the Bond franchise, which has been dormant since Craig’s 007 was blown up in No Time to Die (2021).
Our favourite spy must, of course, be easy on the eye. Former model Turner definitely qualifies in that respect with his strong jaw, dark hair, soulful eyes and buff physique. But he’s got some grit too: he left school at 16 to pursue his dreams of playing football professionally (he’s an avid Chelsea FC fan) and had a decent run in the FA Youth Cup before realising he wasn’t going to make it.
Turner also shares a working-class background with our most recent Bond. Born in Hammersmith in 1990, the only child to a single mum (Rosemary Turner, who worked as a club promoter), Turner grew up on a council estate in Chelsea. Similarly, Craig grew up in a working-class family in Liverpool, failed the 11-plus and left his secondary modern school at 16. Like Turner, sport was a passion: only instead of football, Craig played rugby for his local club.
Craig’s version of Bond seems to echo that biography. In Casino Royale, Eva Green’s accountant Vesper Lynd correctly assesses him as a man who didn’t come from money, which gives him a chip on his shoulder. That fascinating dynamic – the seemingly urbane spy who doesn’t feel entirely comfortable in this world of luxury hotels and casinos – could well prove the basis of Turner’s potential 007 too.
However, unlike Craig, Turner leveraged his good looks to do some very Bond-esque globe-trotting at a young age. From 17, he was modelling in Paris, Italy and Japan, although he grew tired of it, he told the Evening Standard in 2019, because “I wasn’t making enough f****** money”.
Third time lucky, perhaps: after football and strutting the catwalks, Turner found his calling with acting. He racked up supporting turns in TV dramas The Town (2012) and Ripper Street (2013) and films such as the Daniel Radcliffe-led Victor Frankenstein (2015) and video game adaptation Assassin’s Creed (2016), before graduating to leading man roles.
He made a memorable impact as the dastardly cad Prince Anatole Kuragin in the BBC’s 2016 War & Peace, starring opposite Lily James, James Norton and Paul Dano, and followed that up with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018), the big-budget Harry Potter spinoff series led by Eddie Redmayne as eccentric magizoologist Newt Scamander. Turner joined the franchise as Redmayne’s courageous war hero brother Theseus and reprised the role in the next Fantastic Beasts film, The Secrets of Dumbledore, in 2022.
Turner then drew on his sporting background for his first big-screen leading role in George Clooney’s 2023 biographical movie The Boys in the Boat, about a scrappy rowing team competing at the 1936 Olympics. Although the film was dismissed by critics as plodding and dull, Turner won praise for his gruff charisma.
That quality seems to make Turner perfectly suited to men of action. He also played a British Army Lance Corporal in BBC deepfake thriller The Capture (2019) and an American World War II pilot, the real-life John “Bucky” Egan, in the heart-pounding Apple TV series Masters of the Air (2024), which was produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.
The heart of the latter series was the friendship between the impulsive, passionate, hard-drinking Bucky and Austin Butler’s preternaturally cool Gale “Buck” Cleven. Turner proved to be more than a match for Butler, a fellow rising star who had recently been Oscar-nominated for playing Elvis Presley, and the series brought Turner to the attention of viewers around the world.
But our next Bond must also have a way with the ladies, and Turner has proven his bona fides in that area too. He toyed with Anya Taylor-Joy in Jane Austen adaptation Emma (2020), playing the irresistible Frank Churchill, and his latest film is romcom Eternity, in which Elizabeth Olsen’s Joan must choose who to spend her afterlife with: current husband Larry (Top Gun: Maverick’s Miles Teller) or the first husband she lost in the war, Turner’s smouldering charmer Luke.
That steady stream of work, plus the upcoming Apple TV adaptation of William Gibson’s sci-fi novel Neuromancer, has definitely made Turner enough of a name to justify his casting as 007. However, unlike some of the other rumoured contenders, such as Spider-Man actor Tom Holland or veteran action hunk Taylor-Johnson, he isn’t too much of a celebrity – nor has he had any defining roles that might prove a distraction from Bond.
But there is a lot riding on this delayed renaissance of the franchise, which was acquired by Amazon when it purchased MGM Studios for a hefty US$8.5 billion ($14.8b) in 2022. Amazon then paid an additional US$1b in February this year to acquire creative control from Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson.
Jeff Bezos will be looking for a substantial return on his investment, so he might well consider it an added bonus that Turner comes with a famous fiancee: chart-topping pop star Dua Lipa. Getting involved with Bond wouldn’t be her first foray into film, as she previously provided a total bop, Dance the Night, for the Barbie movie soundtrack (she also made a cameo as Mermaid Barbie) and starred in Matthew Vaughan’s 2024 action comedy Argylle.
Who better, then, to whip up a sultry, seductive but firmly contemporary Bond theme for the new film that introduces the character to a younger generation – and perhaps to add Bond Girl to her list of film roles? She and Turner surely wouldn’t mind working on (and promoting) the film together. The pair, who began dating in January 2024 and announced their engagement this June, look extremely loved up, whether attending the Grammys after-party, sailing around the Amalfi Coast on a yacht, or cheering on Oasis at Wembley.
As other Bond contenders fall by the wayside – Holland is reportedly unavailable because of his binding Spider-Man contract, and previous front-runners Taylor-Johnson and Cavill are considered to be ageing out of the role – Turner looks more and more like the chosen one. In his 2019 Standard interview, he said of acting that it feels just like football: “The desire, the performance, the result”. This dynamic striker might be about to hit the back of the net.
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.