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The search for Daniel Craig’s replacement is officially on, and casting director Nina Gold has made one thing very clear about what she’s looking for.
The next actor to play James Bond needs to “ooze sex appeal,” according to Nina Gold, the casting director who has officially signed on with Amazon MGM Studios to find Daniel Craig‘s replacement. Gold, speaking at a Cannes dinner, told Deadline the successful candidate also needs to be able to act and young enough to carry the role across three or four films. Auditions, Variety confirmed, have already started.
Amazon MGM issued a brief statement acknowledging the search is underway, saying the studio does not plan to comment on specific details during the casting process. The studio’s head of film, Courtenay Valenti, gave a slightly warmer version of the same message at CinemaCon last month. “We’re taking the time to do this with care and deep respect,” she said.
Gold is one of the most accomplished casting directors working in prestige film and television. She filled out the cast of HBO’s Game of Thrones, worked on five films in the Star Wars franchise (including casting Daisy Ridley as Rey in The Force Awakens), and received an Oscar nomination for her work on Hamnet in 2025. The Bond job suits her profile exactly.
Her strategy for finding the next 007 appears to involve a lot of evenings in the West End. Deadline reported that Gold has been attending multiple London theater productions in recent weeks, scouting stage actors — the same approach that delivered Craig, whose performance in the 2004 film Layer Cake and his work at the Old Vic and Royal Court helped convince then-producer Barbara Broccoli he was the right choice.
Two names came up in the Deadline account. David Shields, praised for his work in James Graham’s play Punch, and Luke Thompson of Bridgerton, who has an extensive stage background and is set to appear opposite Keira Knightley in a production of The Lives of Others in the fall, around the time director Denis Villeneuve is expected to start evaluating Gold’s recommendations. Neither is a confirmed contender, but neither is speculation from a random corner of the internet.
The field of publicly discussed candidates is already crowded. Jacob Elordi, Callum Turner, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson have all been floated, though none has been confirmed. The film itself has a formidable creative team assembled: Villeneuve directing, Amy Pascal and David Heyman producing, and Steven Knight, creator of Peaky Blinders, writing the script.
Craig played Bond in five films across 15 years. Whoever comes next will be measured against that run for a long time, which may be exactly why Gold is in no visible rush.
