Number Six

I was thinking yesterday, after I heard the news, that Patrick McGoohan has frequently been mentioned as having been considered for, perhaps even offered, the role of James Bond in Dr. No (based on his previous success in the role of a secret agent in a short-lived TV series) but he declined it on moral grounds. (This source says he feared "that Bond would be an unhealthy image for his daughters to see.")

I don't think he would have been as right for that role ― his portrayal may have been closer in spirit to the source material (the character was less cool than cold in the Ian Fleming novels), but I don't think he had the charisma that Sean Connery did. McGoohan was every bit as handsome and masculine, but he always seemed more ― distant to me, somehow, more remote. I don't think the film (much less the series of films) would have succeeded in the same way. (Though it's interesting that after forty years the series came around to casting an actor in Daniel Craig who, I think, has many of the same qualities McGoohan might have brought to the role.)

And of course, he probably wouldn't have been able to make The Prisoner, which would have been an enormous loss.