Henry Cavill’s James Bond Audition Tape Is a Great Look at What Could Have Been

While we’re all wringing our hands about the identity of the next James Bond, a new video has resurfaced online showing a potential 007 of the past. The clip from 2006 shows Henry Cavill running through lines from GoldenEye as part of a screen test for Casino Royale.

Cavill’s lines recreate the first meeting between Bond, then played by Pierce Brosnan, and the villain Xenia Onatopp, originally portrayed by Famke Janssen, with her lines delivered by an unidentified off-screen performer in the clip. Cavill puts a slightly different spin on each of his readings, sometimes hitting a line with more menace, and sometimes playing up the flirtation when Bond says he likes “a woman who pulls rank.”

But the most notable thing about Cavill’s delivery is his quietness, almost softness. The then-22-year-old actor seems to whisper his lines and arch his eyes with interest while listening to Xenia speak. Even when he delivers Bond’s signature veiled threats and double-entendres, there’s a surprising earnestness we’ve never before seen in 007. Watch the audition tape below:

Henry Cavill’s screen test for James Bond in 2006 has been released. pic.twitter.com/O0SOxOoza3— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) February 7, 2025

This might all sound anathema to most fans, but we have to remember that Cavill was auditioning not to play the Bonds of GoldenEye, From Russia With Love, or Live and Let Die. He was auditioning to play the young Bond of Casino Royale, a Bond who still had the ability to fall in love with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green in the finished film). This Bond didn’t have the smoothness foregrounded in the mature takes by Roger Moore and Brosnan, nor the blunt instrument force of Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton. He wasn’t yet comfortable with his license to kill.

With that in mind, it makes sense that Cavill could have been the favorite of director Martin Campbell. Yet, even today, it’s hard to disagree with Eon Productions’ final choice of Daniel Craig, a man who can play the soulfulness foregrounded by Cavill, while still retaining the edge that people usually associate with Bond.

Fortunately, Cavill got the chance to play a superspy later in his career. The actor’s suave CIA agent Napoleon Solo in Guy Ritchie‘s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has made that movie an enduring cult favorite. He won over cynics who disliked him for the Snyder-verse movies with his two-fisted spy August Walker in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. And then there’s Argylle, a movie that doesn’t really make much sense, but does feature Cavill as a Bond-style super-agent. Who has a flattop, for some reason.

Even more than the screen test, these roles prove that Cavill can play Bond. Given that Craig has hung up his Walther PPK after No Time to Die, maybe Eon will circle back around to Cavill, just like they did when they cast Brosnan for GoldenEye after failing to get him for The Living Daylights. If they do, perhaps Cavill can revive the sweetness and softness on display in the screentest, making him a truly unique version of 007.

As far as how Cavill feels about playing the next Bond, he told The Rich Eisen Show last year, “Maybe I’m too old now, maybe I’m not. It’s up to Barbara Broccoli and Mike Wilson and we’ll see what their plans are.” Sounds like the 41-year-old actor is still interested…

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