Ben Whishaw is the New ‘Q’

According to both the UK newspaper ‘The Sun’ and now the BBC, the actor Ben Whishaw has been cast as the new ‘Q’ in the 23 rd James Bond movie ‘Skyfall’. He will be following in the footsteps of Desmond Llewelyn and John Cleese, but it is thought that his version of MI6’s gadgets expert will involve a radical reboot of the character by director Sam Mendes.

The 31-year old English actor recently starred in the well-received BBC drama series ‘The Hour’, which was about the newspaper industry and set in the mid-1950s, around the time of the Suez Crisis (and coincidentally involved an espionage dimension). Whishaw’s other credits include ‘Criminal Justice’ and ‘Brideshead Revisited’. Interestingly, he is also due to play Richard II, opposite Rory Kinnear (who also has a role in ‘Skyfall’), in a new BBC Shakespeare adaptation which is being overseen by Sam Mendes, which will form part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Whishaw also recently played Ariel in the film adaptation of ‘The Tempest’, opposite Dame Helen Mirren.

The ‘Sun’ newspaper commented: ‘Handsome Ben will be the youngest actor to play the MI6 gadget master – and at 31 he is 12 years younger than 007 star Daniel Craig’, and the paper’s ‘source’ was quoted as saying that Whishaw’s version of ‘Q’ will be ‘very different’ from the previous ‘Q’s, adopting a more serious tone in line with the trend in Craig’s Bond films.

This was followed up later on Friday November 25 by a BBC report which said Whishaw’s agent had now confirmed the casting news.