As the veteran actor turns 100 he reveals that he was approached to play the British spy in the early 60s, but realised his accent wouldn’t have been up to scratch
For more than six decades, the actor Dick Van Dyke has been pilloried for his attempts at a British accent in Mary Poppins (1964). Now, the actor who has since apologised for the “most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema” as chimney sweep Bert in the Disney classic has revealed he was in the running to play another UK icon on screen: James Bond.
Speaking on the Today TV programme in the US, Van Dyke, who turns 100 next month, said that Bond producer Albert Broccoli approached him to ask if he fancied the role of the British spy in his first big screen outing.
“Would you like to be Bond?” Van Dyke recalls Broccoli saying, to which he replied: “Have you heard my British accent?” As this conversation would have taken place in the early 60s, before Sean Connery was cast in 1962’s Dr No, it suggests Van Dyke was conscious of his own failings when it came to accents long before production began on Mary Poppins.
In press since, Van Dyke has credited his notoriously inaccurate attempt in that film to an Irish dialect coach, while also suggesting that cast and crew, including the London-born Julie Andrews, should have flagged with him any shortcomings.
