1. Tie - Connery and Craig. Never thought that the great Scot could be matched but Skyfall confirmed what Casino Royale hinted at - that Craig has made the role his own and completely reinvented the part.
3. Brosnan. The populist all-rounder Bond, mixing Connery's Celtic charm, Lazenby's vulnerability, Moore's smoothness and Dalton's humanity.
4. Dalton. The prototype for Craig, but lacking DC's way with a one-liner and intensity, also hampered by his films not being as good as Craig's. And frankly, he's not as good an actor as Craig. But let's not forget what a breath of fresh air he was at the time and what a relief it was to see a Bond who looked like he could hold his own in a fight - the first in a decade and a half, in 1987.
5 & 6. Tie between Lazenby and Moore. If I had my druthers, in an ideal world, George would have carried on in the role into the mid-1980s. He'd only have been in his mid/late 40s then, not an awful lot older than Dalton. For all the criticism of his acting, he could hold his own physically, looked more comfortable in a love scene than Dalton ever did and he knocks the final scene out of the park. I think much of the flak he got at the time was due to him opting to play James Bond and not simply recreating Sean Connery. I think he would have gotten better and better in the role.
But - he didn't. One movie is his lot and ultimately, I don't think it's fair to put him ahead of Rog on that basis. I'm no fan of the humour Moore brought to the role but in fairness, the series was clearly already headed that way with Diamonds Are Forever. And it was just symptomatic of 70s movie sensibilities as oppose to those of the 1960s - in the 1960s, curt macho actors like Connery and Steve McQueen were in vogue, in the 1970s, it was smart alecs like Burt Reynolds and Moore. He outstayed his welcome by at least 2 movies but in Live and Let Die, The Spy Who Loved Me and even bits of For Your Eyes Only, he's very watchable. So I give him equal billing with Lazenby.
