Turner also shares a working-class background with our most recent Bond. Born in Hammersmith in 1990, the only child to a single mum (Rosemary, who worked as a club promoter), Turner grew up on a council estate in Chelsea. Similarly, Craig grew up in a working-class family in Liverpool, failed the 11-plus, and left his secondary modern school at 16. Like Turner, sport was a passion: only instead of football Craig played rugby for his local club.
Craig’s version of Bond seems to echo that biography. In Casino Royale, Eva Green’s accountant Vesper Lynd correctly assesses him as a man who didn’t come from money, which gives him a chip on his shoulder. That fascinating dynamic – the seemingly urbane spy who doesn’t feel entirely comfortable in this world of luxury hotels and casinos – could well prove the basis of Turner’s potential 007 too.
However, unlike Craig, Turner leveraged his good looks to do some very Bond-esque globe-trotting at a young age. From 17, he was modelling in Paris, Italy and Japan; although he grew tired of it, he explained to the Evening Standard in 2019, because “I wasn’t making enough f—–g money”.
Third time lucky, perhaps: after football and strutting the catwalks, Turner found his calling with acting. He racked up supporting turns in TV dramas like The Town (2012) and Ripper Street (2013), and films such as the Daniel Radcliffe-led Victor Frankenstein (2015) and video game adaptation Assassin’s Creed (2016), before graduating to leading man roles.
He made a memorable impact as the dastardly cad Prince Anatole Kuragin in the BBC’s 2016 War & Peace, starring opposite Lily James, James Norton and Paul Dano, and followed that up with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018), the big-budget Harry Potter spin-off series led by Eddie Redmayne as eccentric magizoologist Newt Scamander. Turner joined the franchise as Redmayne’s courageous war hero brother Theseus, and reprised the role in the next Fantastic Beasts film, The Secrets of Dumbledore, in 2022.
