David Tennant has discovered he was one of the names on the list to play James Bond before Daniel Craig landed the role in 2005.
The 51-year-old former Doctor Who star revealed a friend of 007 producers Barbara Broccoli and her half-brother Michael G. Wilson told him the news.
Asked if he has ever been in the running for a Bond movie, Tennant replied: "No, I never believed I had until I worked with a director recently who had worked with the Broccolis, who said, 'Yeah, you were on the list that time.'
"I went, 'What time? He went, 'The last time.' I suppose he meant Daniel Craig, because before that I'd have been a child. I think it was a long list and I don’t think I was ever near the top of it, but apparently so."
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The actor, who played the 10th Doctor from 2005 to 2010, believes landing the Bond role would have dramatically altered his level of fame. He said: "I think it’s a bit of a game changer. That level of celebrity.
"Bond is on a different level. But there is that bit [as the Doctor] where you lose your anonymity, certainly.
"It was a different scale to anything I'd done before in terms of just the general public being aware of you. There's always someone who has a DVD that they want signing.
"But I'm not going to complain about that, it's a very privileged place to be."
Tennant stars in ITV 's new four-part drama Litvinenko. He plays ex-KGB officer and Vladimir Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in London in 2006. It portrays the Met officers who worked for 10 years to find those responsible.
He told the Acting for Others Presents podcast: "Marina, his [Litvinenko’s] wife, is still fighting the fight and she was involved and you could meet her and you thought, 'This is why we’re telling this story'."
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