Born in Colwyn Bay - a seaside town in Northern Wales - of English parents, Dalton himself always seemed ahead of his time. The oldest of five children, Dalton decided upon an acting career at age 16 after attending his first play - a production of Macbeth at the Old Vic. Dalton's father was a successful advertising executive, and both of Dalton's grandfathers had worked in show-business as vaudevillians before his maternal grandfather became a theatrical agent. Dalton's grandmother had also played English music halls with a young up and comer named Charles Chaplin.

In 1964, after attending school in Manchester and Belper, Dalton joined the National Youth Theatre and made his stage debut that summer in Shakespeare's Coriolanus at the Queen's Theatre. Dalton continued his training at London's prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art for two years, where, according to fellow RADA class-mate John Rhys-Davies, Dalton was an immediate sensation.

"It was my second job at RADA, and I remember when Timothy opened the second act of this play he would be wearing a long black wig, a loin-cloth, and covered in black paint," recalled Davies. "And this 2,200-seat theatre would be just packed with women every night. And I remember we all used to say that, when Timothy made his entrance on stage, every woman in the audience took in a deep intake of breath...

"And not through their mouth or nose," added Davies with a grin. Davies, who went on to a successful film career, is perhaps most famous to audiences as Indiana Jones's stoic yet befuddled sidekick Sallah in the 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' movies, as well as for 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy and on TV in the series 'The Untouchables' and 'Sliders.' Davies was reunited with Dalton in 1987 on The Living Daylights, were Davies played the imposing Soviet General Leonid Pushkin. The affable Davies, a fellow Welshman, remembered Dalton's stage presence as inciting "pure animal sexuality.

"There would be two or three hundred woman outside the stage door every night literally begging for him," Davies told me with a chuckle. "I've never seen such a sexual ruckus going on. Basically, it was 300 woman saying 'F*** me, f*** me,' every night. It was an extraordinary sight to witness."

But the young Bond-in-waiting refused to cash in on his roguish good looks. Instead, Dalton continued to focus on his stage work, appearing in Richard III, As You Like It, Love's Labor Lost, Romeo and Juliet, and The Merchant of Venice. An even though he launched a promising film career in 1968 with The Lion in Winter, Dalton continued to return to the theatre. "Several actors I knew had become movie stars and then quickly disappeared," explained Dalton. "I was influenced by them and consequently turned down films for a long time while I went back to theater."

Eclectic film choices did follow, as did numerous TV appearances, from the acclaimed BBC dramatization of Jane Eyre to Mistral's Daughter to Sins with Joan Collins. But Dalton was always considered one of the mainstays of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a shining jewel of London's West End. And yet he admitted he was puzzled by the reactions when he took over the role of James Bond. "My career had always been a mixture of stage, screen and television," he said with a shrug. "There are some roles no actor can resist. I think it's every kid's dream to play James Bond." And Dalton has already essayed practically every classic romantic hero from English literature, so James Bond seemed a natural progression in, if not a glaring omission from, his pantheon of portrayals. Only Dalton didn't expect Bond to overtake his life.

Timothy being interviewed at the Bond Bafta Evening - November 2002.

"Maybe I was dumb, or maybe I was arrogant, but the first questions I got from journalists were 'Yeah, it's great, but aren't you frightened of being typecast? Aren't you afraid of what this image will do to your career? From now on, you are James Bond for the world!' And this is what I mean by being naive or dumb, but I said, 'Come on, guys - I've been a working actor all my life. I've done lots of different things. Okay, so most of the work one does as an actor doesn't reach as wide or as public as Bond. But I'm in my 30s, I've been around....I'm now the fourth person to play Bond, so surely an audience is getting used to the idea of actors coming in and doing Bond and then other actors coming in and doing Bond. It's an ongoing thing.'

"They didn't like that," continued Dalton. "Even though it's true, you suddenly become JAMES BOND for the entire world. Everyone suddenly looks at you as James Bond." Dalton revealed the moment that the global impact of Bond finally hit home. "It quite frankly shocked the s*** out of me," he explained shaking his head in disbelief. "I happened to be doing this little documentary about Wolves, and I was spending some time up in northern Canada and also northern Alaska. I went to live with the Eskimos while we were making it. And it was as far away from human civilization as you could probably get" - Dalton couldn't help but chuckle recalling the memory - "so here we were, skidding in on this ice runway near this remote village in the middle of nowhere. And suddenly, all these Eskimo's came out, and when they saw me get off the plane they started pointing, and shouting, 'It's James Bond!" Dalton couldn't hold back the laughter. "I was so completely floored! I mean the influence of these movies is completely total. It's just such a strange feeling that absolutely seizes you."

But Dalton still continued to undulge in a diverse array of projects between and after Bonds, including Hawks, The Rocketeer, Salt Water Moose, Scarlett, and the comedy Beautician and the Beast. I had longed for years to do an out-and-out comedy," he said, "but no one had ever asked me to do one....To some extent in our life, we become victims of what everyone else thinks we are." However, as much as he tried to distence himself from the Bond image, Dalton was forever branded. "I just think of myself as Tim Dalton, the actor, but the rest of the world doesn't. And I think that can limit you very much in this world," he admitted. "No one wants you to play, say a Toronto advertising executive, or an Idaho cop, or let's say just a regular British guy. Because they know the minute you walk onto the screen, all the audience is going to say, 'Hey, it's James Bond.' So there is that downside. And I realize now that all the journalists were right about image...."

Dalton then elaborated on the dilemma facing any actor stepping into the Bond role. "It's a fame through notoriety, I think, rather then a fame through recognition of acting work. It's a double-edged sword." Dalton was quick to point out the advantages as well. "It definitely did help me make some films that maybe would never have been made....and I can always get a table in a restaurant now," he laughed. "But I am very, very surprised by it all. I mean, it's been over 10 years now. Ten years! That's a long time. But it is lovely when people come up to me - and say, 'I really loved what you did with Bond, and I wish you were doing more.'

"So I am glad that I did it," he added, "but I'm also glad I'm not doing it. Because it's not James Bond who happens to be called Timothy Dalton today. It's back, I think, to Timothy Dalton, the actor, who played James Bond."

Timothy at the James Bond BAFTA Evening - November 2002.

Dalton was, admittedly, never comfortable with the intense publicity surrounding the Bond films. He shied away from interviews, especially when the press started dissecting his private life and reporting his romantic liaisons over the years with various woman. Old pal Davies said he was disappointed by Dalton's reticence with the media. "I love Timothy immensely, but I think he thought himself more important then Bond, and I think that showed in the amount of time he was prepared to spend promoting it," explained Davies. "I think he regarded himself as a more serious actor. But when you've got a three-picture deal, as with something as huge as Bond, you've really got to get out there and help promote. It's not enough to just do them, you have to get out there and sell them too. And I always felt that he shortchanged them."

Dalton loathed the media intrusion, and his disdain for the Fleet Street press hounds was profound. D'Abo, who spent nearly five months globe-trotting with Dalton while shooting The Living Daylights in Morocco, Vienna, London, and Tangiers, described Dalton as "the most professional actor I've ever worked with," she said, "and a great team actor. But he is also a very reserved and private person. He's a very quiet man, actually. He's not an extrovert by any means."

In fact, Dalton's favourite pastime is fishing, which he pursues with the same intensity and dedication as his acting. His favourite locales are the rivers in western Ireland and in the north and west of Scotland, and he's pulled sharks out of the Pacific and put down lines in Mexico and Alaska. It's a solitary diversion which Dalton enjoys "mostly because it's just completely and wonderfully different from the world that I work and live in," he said. "And I suppose there's also an element of the natural hunting instinct."

But the predatory and prying eyes of the worldwide press weren't about to deter Dalton from continuing on as Bond for a third film. "The last one I made was in '88 and came out in '89, and we were starting to do a third, which would have brought me to the end of my contract," Dalton explained. "I originally thought it would be a nice idea if a different guy took over the game each time. I thought, if there was going to be a series of actors playing James Bond, then why not do it that way? I'll do one and then let someone else do one and keep an interest going. And also you don't run the danger of getting too typecast. But they wouldn't let me do that. They said, No, no, no - you've got to do three.' So I said, 'Okay.' We started the third, we were in preproduction on it, and talking about the script, meeting directors. But then the lawsuit came down between the Broccolis and MGM/UA, which was then under one of its many different phases of ownership during that period of time.

"It was obviously a very big lawsuit, and it stopped everything," continued Dalton. "And that effectively ended my contract because they couldn't make another one at that time. My contract had basically run out. And they said to me, 'Well, would you do another one?' And I said, I can't say no, and I can't say I will either, because we don't know when we're going to do it.' But we decided we weren't going to say anything about that, because with no Bond movies getting made the last thing we wanted was publicity about me leaving.

"When it finally became possible to make one again, the question was asked again. They said, 'We'd love you to come to do more - how do you feel?' But by then, after a four-year break, I found it was intellectually easy to say, 'I'm done!' By then, I knew how fixed the image was in people's minds, and I wanted to get back to being Timothy Dalton the actor, not James Bond.

Still, when it was officially announced that 'Goldeneye' was going into production in 1994 and Pierce Brosnan had been named as the new 007, Dalton couldn't help but feel some regret about his decision. "Emotionally, I think it was probably a little more difficult because, in all honesty, I felt I did it right, and nobody was going to stand in my box," Dalton confessed. "I guess I probably thought of it territorially, being a little bit possessive. So intellectually it was an easy decision, but emotionally...."

Dalton's voice trailed off, but then he smiled wistfully. "You just have to move on," he shrugged. "The safe road is to say it's a lifetime franchise, they're going to do them forever, and that's the rest of my life. But the more risky thing to do is say, 'No, go on - you've done it already. Be happy. Get on and rediscover being yourself and do different things.' So that was the chance I took."

But it wasn't until 'Goldeneye' was before the cameras and advance teaser posters of Brosnan's Bond started appearing that Dalton says he finally felt a sense of closure. "When I saw those posters of Pierce standing there," laughed Dalton, who then stood up from his chair and demonstrated the classic Bond position, left arm crossed and right hand holding an imaginary gun by his head, "I suddenly thought to myself, 'Jesus, I don't have to stand there with a gun to the side of my head anymore! I suddenly found the most tremendous sense of liberation, and I started feeling more like myself then I'd ever felt in years! I suddenly felt free." Dalton continued: "The minute the attention shifted from me to Pierce, I started getting (a) more scripts sent to me, and (b), this was really interesting, I started getting scripts of a completely different kind. The focus had shifted, and I was suddenly out of that mold. Though it will never shift entirely, because I realize the five of us are members of this strange silhouette - it's a club, really."

Even after his departure, Dalton remained close wih the Bond family. "Cubby had particularly become a very good friend," he explained, "and certainly his daughter Barbara, who is now producing, is one of my best female friends that I've got." So what did Dalton think of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films? "Well, they are all friends of mine, and I'd be a very unobjective critic," he smiled. "But I'm glad it's there, and I'm glad they've been so successful. And I hope they all will be.

"It truly is one of the oddest phenomenons in movie history," Dalton reflected. "I saw them as a kid, you saw them as a kid....so maybe everyone's kids should go and see Bond movies and grow up with them."

For Your Eyes Only © Copyright David Giammarco - 2002. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.

Critic's Corner - July 2010.

Welcome to Critic's Corner, Sheila who is a member of the group gave me this idea and I think it is great! This is a part of the page where you can add your own review of Timothy's movies and have it posted here, and this month Dennise who lives in Clinton, WA, USA has written her Timothy review for you and here it is:

Timothy Dalton as a Comic Actor By Dennise D Cox

Timothy Dalton and Fran Drescher in a scene from The Beautician and the Beast.

The name Timothy Dalton may conjure up immediate thoughts of a cold and calculating James Bond, but peel back the layers of his resume and we find a treasure trove of emotionally charged humorous characters we can relate to. Looking past his seriously handsome, chiseled features and north English accent, is to find an actor that can make us laugh out loud and also make us cry.

As I rave on the subject of comedy, I'm looking beyond the attitude of humor, which is best described by Michael Shurtleff (from his book Audition) as "something beyond the jokes; a lightening of the load from what we're dumping on the audience. The actor must find it in every scene. If it's not there, it must be put there."

Though this attitude can be found within each character Timothy has done, playing a comedy has its extra challenges. Jokes and physical gags are built into the script with the exclusive goal of making people laugh. Jokes by the funniest of men have been known to fall flat on the big screen. When it succeeds and looks effortless, that is called talent.

Producers' admit when Timothy was cast as Boris Pochenko in the romantic comedy The Beautician and the Beast, he was not an obvious choice. They were pleased to have him attached to the movie, but did wonder if he could be funny. They were convinced of his abilities, however, after his first day on the set. Dalton had to work alongside the beautiful Fran Drescher, known for her comedic talent on the popular 90s sitcom 'The Nanny.' Timothy not only kept up with Fran, but together they emulated the humor and charm of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo from the vintage favorite 'I Love Lucy.'

The story, a blend of 'The King and I' and 'Beauty and the Beast' takes place in a small European country still run by a dictator (Boris), masquerading his government as a democracy. Joy is a beautician masquerading as an academic teacher, hired to educate the dictator's children.

Dalton plays Boris as an exaggerated, arrogant, flamboyant but still youthful tyrant, thriving on intimidating everyone around him. He has met his match with Joy, however, who shows no fear or intimidation. Their confrontations crackle and pop. Boris also speaks with a quirky European accent that makes the simple task of talking an exercise in funny. It is pure delight when Drescher's Joy Miller repeats words back to Boris, mimicking the style in which it was delivered. A line that still makes me laugh is Boris's "give it me" (said in that wonderful accent) after Joy tries to hide some mayonnaise.

One of their best and funniest scenes involves a massage table, a small white towel and a woman (Joy, of course) pretending to be someone she isn't so she doesn't get caught being somewhere she shouldn't. Skillfully and effortlessly, Fran and Tim lure us into their story, never disappointing to the end.

Timothy's next rom-com is the film Timeshare, AKA: Bitter Suite, opposite Nastassja Kinski. The movie is about two one-parent families ending up in a rented beach house for the same two weeks. Forced to share accommodation, they must put up with each other's irksome personalities until another place becomes vacant. From the opening scene to the closing, the movie is chock full of trouble, fun in the sun, and romance.

One of the best 'laugh out loud' scenes is when Tim's character, Matt, is joined in the shower by Nastassja's Julia, thinking Matt is her fiancé Russell. Embarrassed by her mistake, she bolts from the bathroom grabbing the first thing she could get her hands on-the fluffy toilet lid cover. (Earlier we witnessed the dog stealing the towel.) Running down the hall covering her girlie areas with the fluffy cover, she is pursued by Matt, yelling her name and using the matching floor rug to cover up his guy area. This scene is a terrific sampling of Dalton's flair for physical comedy.

Timothy can also be seen in comedic supporting roles in the movies Looney Tunes: Back in Action and Sextette, for starters. In both stories, he plays a character hiding a secret identity. His Looney Tunes role is a complete spoof on his James Bond personae, playing an actor who portrays a superspy in a chain of popular movies, as a cover to his real superspy job. There is a scene where his character, Damien Drake, is held hostage and is hooked up to this ACME mind control contraption. When a button is pushed, it makes him hit himself in the face. The scene is done hilariously well. The extra fun is to know that he had to do the hitting (Tim, himself) so that the machine got all the credit.

Hot Fuzz, Brenda Starr, and Werewolf Concerto, an episode from the Tales from the Crypt HBO series, are three other must-see viewings. Beginning with a shady, superficial grocery store manager, to a mysterious one-eyed man who always arrives out of nowhere, to a tricked werewolf; it is a wonderful grab bag of satire and screwball comedy I encourage you to explore.

Last but not least is one of Dalton's most endearing roles: Bancroft, in the Robert Ellis Miller directed film Hawks. In the vein of black comedy, the role was an impressive challenge for Dalton in 1987, fresh off the set of his first James Bond movie, The Living Daylights. Bancroft is a character who has been sentenced to a hospital's terminal ward, but chooses to laugh in the face of death so that he doesn't cry. Everything he does is meant to stir things and create chaotic fun. His acerbic wit is a weapon against the doldrums.

In a fit of despair, Bancroft escapes on an adventure with his new roommate, Decker, in a stolen ambulance. Played with alluring sincerity, Dalton truly shows his talent with words, body language and facial expression to evoke laughter in all the right places. His fellow cast mate, Anthony Edwards (Decker), is a great accomplice. Despite a short section of pitiful nudity, the movie Hawks is a captivating story with a groovy soundtrack composed by Barry Gibb (from the Bee Gees). Plus, this is the only time you'll see Timothy wearing a big red nose and doctors' scrubs with loafers. Priceless.

All of these films are available on DVD with the exception of Hawks, which is only found on VHS. So grab some popcorn and have a night in. It is my hope that when you have seen these films for yourself, the name Timothy Dalton will conjure up a case load of amusing characters. Though Dalton will always be a part of the James Bond elite, the entertainment doesn't stop there.

The picture of Timothy on the left is from a scene in Timeshare aka Bitter Suite.

Timothy Dalton as a Comic Actor © Copyright by Dennise D Cox - June 20, 2010 . All Rights Reserved.

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A Very Warm Welcome To Our New Member Of The Group For June 2010.

• Irene from Germany joined us on June 3rd.

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Timothy's Project Question of the Month for July 2010.

Each month we have a Timothy question of the month, just for a bit of fun. It could be a quote from one of Timothy's films or projects, a picture, or some other information to test you on. I do of course understand that not all of you have seen everything that Timothy has done, so I will be going through all his work, to make it fair, but it is fun to guess though. I will give you the answer on this page at the beginning of each month, and set the next question at that time too.

The question and answer to the June Timothy question was:-

Question: In the scene pictured above what project is Timothy in and what is his characters name?

Answer: Movie: Naked in New York and Timothy played Elliot Price in it.

The clue for the June picture: It is to with a city in America otherwise known as the 'Big Apple.'

Many congratulations to Sheila, Dennise, and Louay who once again got the Timothy question of the month correct. :-)

Here is the Timothy Question of the Month for July 2010:-

Timothy Dalton.

Question: In the picture above what project is Timothy in and what was his character's name?

Here is your clue: It tells the true story of a conflict that the UK had with part of another country.

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Timothy Dalton Chat Group Birthdays for July 2010.

• Marie who lives in Toronto, Canada has a birthday on July 1st.

• The Captian who lives in St. Louis USA has a birthday on July 24th.

All of us in The Timothy Dalton Chat Group send you lots of love and hope you all have a wonderful birthday!

With very warm wishes,

Deb
Coordinator, The Timothy Dalton Chat Group.

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