18 Great Actors Totally Wasted In James Bond Movies

Played: Gustav Graves in Die Another Day.

Gustav Graves is a hammy, evil British billionaire... who's actually a North Korean colonel who underwent gene therapy. As that description alone should indicate, even Daniel Day Lewis would've struggled to save such a stupid character and sure enough, poor Toby Stephens turned in the worst performance of his career.

One gets the sense that Stephens, understandably, really didn't know what to do with this nonsensical villain and he ultimately just hammed it up a lot, which made for an absolutely cringe-worthy performance.

Toby Stephens is actually a really, really good actor who's normally very reliable and he could've been an awesome villain with better writing, so seeing him so completely squandered in Die Another Day remains a painful spectacle even now.

In the upcoming second season of the (very fun) Alex Rider TV show - based on the Alex Rider books, which are heavily inspired by James Bond - Stephens will be playing the main antagonist, who will no doubt be very Bond villain-esque. Let's just hope that doesn't go as badly as the time where he actually played a Bond villain.