Why Sam Neill felt 'extreme reluctance' over becoming James Bond?

Sam Neill has returned to the iconic Jurassic Park franchise with the latest released installment Jurassic World Dominion.

The New Zealand actor recently revealed that he once auditioned for the iconic role of James Bond – a role he never wanted to play, he insisted.

Speaking with CinemaBlend about his new movie, Neill, 74, shared that he has been thankful for not nabbing the role of world’s most famous spy.

"My agent shoved me into a really embarrassing test," he told the outlet. "It was one of the most mortifying times of my life, because I really didn't want to play James Bond."

“I did that with extreme reluctance,” Neill confessed. “I think that was the last thing I allowed my then agent to bully me into.”

He recalled that he had told his then agent that he didn’t want to be James Bond, “‘I particularly don’t want to be that James Bond that everybody says, ‘Look, there’s James Bond in the corner of the restaurant. He’s the one I don’t like.’”

Neill auditioned for the Bond role in the mid 1980s, when Roger Moore had wrapped on his seventh and final Bond film, A View To A Kill.

At the time Neill auditioned, the role eventually went to Pierce Brosnan, who Neill said “really, really wanted the role.”

“I’m so pleased he got the gig,” Neill said. “Pierce really wanted the gig, and he was really good at it. He was terrific. I didn’t want the gig, and I would have been any good. So all’s well that ends well.”