But while an actor from Ireland or the Antipodes would be acceptable, the consensus seems to be than an American Bond is a step too far, no matter how good his accent. Californian beefcake Austin Butler ruled himself out on that basis, calling the idea “sacrilegious”. It might seem arbitrary, but Bond’s emergence as an icon of post-war British identity was, in part, a response to the growing cultural dominance of the United States. “I agree with Austin Butler,” Bruce Feirstein, screenwriter on three Bond films, tells the BBC. “The reason Bond is so loved internationally is specifically because he’s not American.”
