Halle Berry won’t return to the James Bond franchise, even if asked to play the man himself.
The Cannes Film Festival kicked off with a press conference featuring this year’s jury, which includes the Oscar-winning actress and former Bond girl herself. Among the topics directed at Berry was the possibility of an actress taking over from Daniel Craig as James Bond, and her answer was pretty clear cut: “No.”
Halle Berry: “I don’t know if [James Bond] should be a woman. In 2025 it’s nice to say, ‘Oh, he should be a woman.’ But I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do.” #Canneshttps://t.co/8HVaAgMu1t pic.twitter.com/KIwCR0CPDP
— Variety (@Variety) May 13, 2025
“I don’t know if 007 really should be a woman. In 2025, it’s nice to say, ‘Oh, she should be a woman.’ But I don’t really know if I think that’s the right thing to do,” she explained.
Berry, who played NSA Agent Giacinta “Jinx” Johnson in Die Another Day, knows the Bond universe well. When the film premiered in 2002, Berry became an instant hit with audiences, with her scene where she emerges from the ocean in an orange and white bikini remaining one of the franchise’s most iconic moments.
Berry also said during the press conference that there likely won’t be a Jinx spinoff: “There was a time that could have happened. Probably should have happened. I would have loved for that to happen. But I think that time has passed.”
fun fact: this water was freezing! but it was worth every second. will forever love my Bond family 🤍 https://t.co/Di9292us9a
— Halle Berry (@halleberry) April 15, 2025
There has been cultural push for a female Bond in recent years—especially with most recent Bond Daniel Craig stepping away from the role—but Berry isn’t the first actress to disagree with the idea.
In an interview with The Sun, Ana de Armas, the actress who played the newest iteration of a “Bond Girl” in the Craig-led No Time to Die, also dismissed the potential gender-swap.
“There’s no need for a female Bond,” de Armas said. “There shouldn’t be any need to steal someone else’s character, you know, to take over. This is a novel, and it leads into this James Bond world and this fantasy of that universe where he’s at.”
British icon like Helen Mirren also refuted the idea of a woman playing Bond, albeit for different reasons than Berry and de Armas.
“The whole concept of James Bond is drenched and born out of profound sexism,” Mirren told The Guardian, stating that she would prefer if filmmakers wrote stories about the real-life women spies rather than gender-swap the character.
Even Craig didn’t love the idea, preferring that the industry create better characters for women instead.
“The answer to that is very simple,” Craig told Radio Times. ”There should simply be better parts for women and actors of colour. Why should a woman play James Bond when there should be a part just as good as James Bond, but for a woman?”
Later in the press conference, Berry addressed Cannes’ newly tightened dress code, which bans long trains and implied nudity. The rules even forced Berry to ditch a dress she planned to wear for the festival’s premiere.
“[I] had an amazing dress by Gupta that I cannot wear tonight because it [had] too big of a train,” Berry said.
Maybe an elite spy could help her find a way to sneak it by security.
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