But Dame Judi Dench's M is now a national institution. Now, fast-forward nearly a decade, and let's look at those points again. But most of all, they could not believe that M, played for so many years and with such gravitas by Bernard Lee, was going to be played by. They questioned the fact that, instead of his trademark Aston Martin, the character was now driving a BMW. And I went out on stage and I was amazed at the questions.' He shudders at the memory. I was naive enough to think these people didn't take this kind of thing seriously. 'I was in New York with GoldenEye,” the director recalls, 'and I was invited to one of those fan conventions. They liked his old-school manners, his tuxedo, the daft gadgets he used and invariably destroyed, his crusty old MI6 boss, M. Yet what Campbell realised when he tried to take this character into the 21st Century is that things had come full circle. Not only was a new actor introduced – Pierce Brosnan – but audiences were beginning to question whether, in a post-feminist, post-Cold War world, the character was needed at all. He first met this chap in 1995 when he made GoldenEye, itself a milestone in the character's lifeline. He's used to it by now, but this time, if he can't pull it off, the plunge will be spectacular, taking with him not just the new movie but the entire future of Ian Fleming's most famous literary creation.Ĭampbell knows this. As he approaches his 50th anniversary and his sixth incarnation, this character is facing his most daunting mission yet. And, oh yes, he's survived death by hat too.) But this character is about to change. (Gun crime is old hat in intelligence circles. This guy has been on the screen since 1962, and in the 44 years that followed has survived assassination attempts by means as diverse as poison gas, death ray, crocodile and spider. Not that this character needs any introduction. Five words that put you right there, in a world of espionage, elegant cocktails (shaken, not stirred) and fast cars. The line he's talking about is possibly the most famous line in movie history, or rather the most repeated line in movie history. But then again, it could just be that it goes without saying. It may be because he has just five weeks to finish up the 21st and possibly most important movie in Britain's most lucrative film franchise, and this fuel break will be his only escape for the foreseeable future.

He doesn't even look up from his dim sum when he says this. “We never test the line,” says Martin Campbell.

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