Robert Pattinson has auditioned for James Bond – and finally the 007 race is interesting | Sian Cain

Hollywood’s weirdest man has entered the fray and the casting decision that has dragged on and on suddenly feels exciting for the first time

Why does anyone want to play James Bond? The franchise seems to spit out its leads, leaving them wrecked and disillusioned. “I’d like to kill him,” Sean Connery famously said of Bond, that “dull, prosaic English policeman”; it was Daniel Craig who finally managed to do it, a fifth film torturously pulled out of him because Barbara Broccoli agreed to knock him off. As soon as his Bond took a missile to the bonce, Craig dived right into playing all the oddballs he could get, with Benoit Blanc as palate cleanser.