Following 1985’s A View To A Kill, Sir Roger Moore bowed out as James Bond for the final time after seven movies.
The hunt was on for the fourth official actor to play 007 in 1987’s The Living Daylights.
While Dalton was eventually cast, future Jurassic Park star Neill auditioned, but he’s now really glad he wasn’t cast.
Speaking with the Financial Times, Neill said bluntly: “I dodged a bullet that was never fired.”
He imagined: “You’d walk into a room and people would say ‘that is the James Bond I never liked.’”
Earlier this month Neill described his 007 audition as “a bad dream.”
The 70-year-old said: “No. Don’t ask! It was all a bad dream.
“The lesson I learnt that day was never be bullied by your agent into going along to something you don’t want to do ever again. That was the last time.”
Neill added: “And without naming names, some of the people who have been our hotel for the last couple of days, there is no money on earth that could compensate me for the lives they have to live.
“There are guests on my corridor with six security guards outside their door. Six! And those are the people they now live with.
“When you get there, you’ve lost all semblance of life. So I’m very comfortable with whatever career that I have. Because it’s permitted me great privilege with very little loss.”
