The Bond IndexWho was the best James Bond? Settled with data. Updated

Who was the best James Bond?

The Bond Index compares the six actors who played James Bond in the 25 official Eon Productions films, from Dr. No (1962) to No Time to Die (2021), across 15 categories: reviews, audience ratings, polls, published rankings, box office, kills, villains, travel, theme songs, Oscars, romance, martinis and more. Every category counts equally, and readers can switch categories off or reweight them. The data is refreshed monthly.

The actors

The categories

  • Critic reviews (The verdicts): The share of critics who reviewed each film positively on Rotten Tomatoes, averaged across the actor’s films.
  • Audience ratings (The verdicts): IMDb user rating (scaled to 100) and Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter, averaged for each film. Where one is missing, the other stands alone.
  • Public polls (The verdicts): Average placing across public polls, scored with a Borda count so partial results still count. Representative surveys weigh 1; older waves, reader votes and crowd rankings weigh 0.5.
  • Pundit rankings (The verdicts): Average placing in rankings of the Bond actors published by critics, editors and columnists, scored the same way as polls.
  • Action (Field work): People Bond kills himself, per film. Young’s count leaves out explosions and vehicles he merely sets off, so it is lower than fan tallies but consistent across films.
  • Villains finished (Field work): Each film’s principal villains and chief henchmen: full marks if Bond kills or captures them, half if someone else does or they switch sides, nothing if they get away. Villains who escape and come back count against the Bond who let them go.
  • Villain quality (Field work): Where each film’s villains place in published “best Bond villain” rankings, scored with the same Borda count as the actor rankings (a film’s best-placed villain counts) and scaled so a film ranked first everywhere would score 100.
  • Globetrotting (Field work): Countries and territories each film depicts, from Young’s dataset with the editors’ corrections shown on each film page.
  • Box office (Legacy): Worldwide gross per film, adjusted to 2024 US dollars with the US consumer price index.
  • Academy Awards (Legacy): Competitive Academy Awards won, per film.
  • Theme songs (Legacy): Peak position of each film’s title song on the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100, at the time of release.
  • Tenure (Legacy): Number of official Eon films. Staying power says something about contracts as well as quality, so switch it off if you think it shouldn’t count.
  • Romance (Style): Women Bond seduces on screen, per film. The most consistent stand-in for a kiss count: every film is coded with the same rule.
  • Martinis (Style): Martinis Bond drinks on screen, per film.
  • “Bond. James Bond.” (Style): How often Bond says “Bond, James Bond” in each film. No Time to Die is not counted.

The films