Sean Connery is the UK’s favourite Bond, but ‘Skyfall’ takes the top spot for the favourite film!

Today is the 60th Anniversary of the Bond Franchise! On October 5th 1962, Sean Connery graced our screens as James Bond for the first time in ‘Dr No’. Since then we have had 25 more films, 5 more actors playing the role, countless incredible villains and many chart-topping theme songs. As of 2021, the Bond franchise has grossed over 7 billion dollars. With it having been enjoyed by so many over the decades, in commemoration, we ran a few surveys to discover fan favourites using our sister site Find Out Now.

Find Out Now interviewed 2,256 GB adults from 2022-10-04 to 2022-10-05, and produced a sample of 2,003 respondents which is nationally representative by: Gender, Age, Social Class, Region, Brexit Vote, 2019 General Election, within +/-1% of ONS quotas.

Firstly, we polled for the favourite actor to play 007:

• Sean Connery, the actor who played Bond in ‘Goldfinger’, ‘Thunderball’ and ‘Diamonds are Forever’ came in top place with 29%, narrowly beating Daniel Craig star of ‘Casino Royal’, ‘Skyfall’ and ‘Spectre’ who had 26% of the votes.
• While Sean Connery was favourite overall, a higher percentage of women voted Daniel Craig as their favourite, while men preferred Connery.
• Interestingly, 41% of Connery’s votes were Scottish, while the other actors seemed to be more evenly spread across the UK.
• And unsurprisingly, the age of voters highly influenced their favourite Bond, with many people not watching older than the actor who played Bond in their decade.

Secondly, we asked which Bond Film was your favourite:

• While 36% of the survey-takers didn’t know their favourite, ‘Skyfall’ was the clear favourite with 12% of the vote.
• On the opposite side of the spectrum, the least popular bond was Connery’s one-time come-back: ‘Never Say Never Again’.
• When it comes to favourite film, the majority of Goldfinger fans are 65 and older, while 18-24 year-olds make up the majority of ‘Skyfall”s votes.

And lastly, who was your favourite Bond villain:

• Again, while most were unsure which villain was actually their favourite, Jaws hit top voted spot with 22%.
• This was a landslide in comparison to second place: Blofeld who only got 8% of the votes.
• 54% of 18-24s didn’t know who their favourite was, unlike the 45-year-olds who favoured Jaws at 34%.

Across all of the surveys, men were far more likely to have opinions on Bond than women.

The classic Bond theme we all know has 45m views on Youtube, with some of the other most popular theme songs being: ‘Skyfall’, ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ and ‘Live and Let Die’. A concert: ‘The Sound of 007’, was held in the Royal Albert Hall last night to celebrate the music of Bond over the decades. It is free to stream on Amazon Prime Video if you are interested in seeing the performances and learning more of the history surrounding the creation of some of the iconic songs.

So were these results what you expected?
Is there a Bond favourite of yours that didn’t seem to score as highly as you would have thought?
Are you going to do anything to celebrate 60 years of Bond?

Have a good day and good luck in future draws 🙂