 The success of the James Bond films has made household names out of actors playing Agent 007 Bond Names Bond James Bond Except for one The Forgotten James Bond The Forgotten James Bond, George Lazenby The black sheep of the group, the guy that only did it once and wasn't even an actor George Lazenby went from being a car salesman in Queenby in the 1960s to playing 007 Is it true that as I think you put it yourself once, you told a pack of lies to get the role? I admit it before that I never really was a fan of Lazenby as Bond However, I always maintained that I love Lazenby the man himself and his extraordinary story of how he went from being a car salesman in Australia to landing the role of James Bond The new James Bond I mean, whenever you hear Lazenby talk about his life story in interviews or press conferences he's always talking about these wild adventures that led to this I always said to myself, someday a movie should be made about how George Lazenby can't his way into becoming James Bond And now, quite recently, Hulu has done just that or, well, at least the closest thing to that They made a documentary called Becoming Bond showcasing Lazenby's amazing story in great detail Yes, including the casual trisms he's always talking about Lazenby always struck me as this guy who just wanted to get laid and probably became Bond to do exactly that and this documentary certainly shows in the most hilarious ways that Lazenby was indeed all about getting some but it also is a really interesting character study of exactly the type of guy he is and how his story truly unfolded The documentary stars Joss Lawson playing the adult Lazenby for the most part of the documentary and the real George narrating it all as he takes you through his life story in detail which is all told in several chapters You can watch it on Hulu itself or find some other creative way using Google to find it I'm sure you'll manage I'm just here to refue it and share my thoughts so beware, spoilers ahead It all starts off explaining George's humble beginnings in Australia as he was a young child who was mostly bored out of his mind at school pulling pranks like taking snakes and bats to school and sneaking into his neighbor's car and drive around in it It's explained early on that Lazenby had several operations during his early childhood and was left with only half a kidney He wasn't expected to live past the age of 12 Perhaps with Lazenby knowing this he viewed his life in the way that he did Every day was a bonus It could have been over for him at any time The fact that he's still alive to this day is actually quite something When the documentary goes into Lazenby's teenage years you already start to see his interest in girls is starting One day he pulled up to a much older chick pretended his bike was broken and ended up on top of her shortly after and soon losing his virginity to her in a car Lazenby describes the feeling of first getting laid and how he thought his penis had blown up and had to light a match to check it was still there It seems completely irrelevant to the story of how he eventually ended up becoming James Bond but it's also somewhat genuine and relatable and just fun to listen to Throughout the whole thing you get a sense that he's a bit naive but the documentary also shows that he was the only one in school that didn't graduate so that explains some of that Eventually when he grows up his uncle gets him a job as a car mechanic and Lazenby being Lazenby soon discovers that the car salesman are having a much better time chatting up the chicks so he soon decides that that is what he wants to do too He sucks at it at first but soon finds out the tricks of just listening to the clients and not saying much at all to sell these cars He doesn't even need to know much about the meter Already we are shown that despite him being uneducated he's quite capable of still succeeding in a different creative way anyway so eventually Lazenby falls for a chick who is depicted as his ideal dream girl the love of his life Belinda She has a boyfriend at first but Lazenby asks her out anyway even though her boyfriend is standing right next to her I'm not surprised by this at all and again he has it his way and starts dating this chick She has this rich and powerful father who hangs out with the prime minister of Australia which George is completely unaware of and he just thinks it's some dude that looks exactly like the prime minister again showcasing how naive Lazenby really is Bye dad, bye Bob Let's go What are his names Bob do? Of course it is What a coincidence Yeah It also seems that a lot of people completely hated Lazenby in his life as Belinda's father doesn't like him mainly because he's a rich dude and Lazenby is just some bum and he doesn't want his daughter to date him Lazenby even talks about being unable to get an erection the first few times she's with Belinda which causes him to panic and end up being so drunk and miserable about it all that he eventually ended up doing it with her drunk and not remembering any of it but she leaves him a note and saying he was fantastic again it seems completely pointless to the story but I just love this kind of stuff it really shows that Lazenby was just another guy like any of us that was full on in love with this one girl who meant the world to him it's Belinda's father that eventually encourages her to go to London for a few months hoping she would just forget about George which does seem to happen she stops writing him what surprised me is that this is what motivated Lazenby to move to London he just hops on a boat that takes him all around the world just to try and get back the girl that he loves it once again shows Lazenby's way of life he just took a gamble unfortunately things don't work out that well when he first arrives in London Belinda is nowhere to be found and he even goes out of his ways to post pictures of her around town desperately trying to find her eventually he finds out she's seeing some other dude so Lazenby punches him and all of the guy's friends end up going after him he hits rock bottom once again until he finally gets a letter from her saying she would like to see him again platonically which basically is the 1960s way of saying that he got friends owned platonically what the hell is that man I think it means emotionally like spiritually platonically platonically yeah she underlined it and the stories Lazenby tells next are just absolutely hilarious obviously Lazenby doesn't give a crap about being friends owned and still tries to bang his ex-girlfriend he still loves her so he steals the keys to her hotel room and tries to sneak in there at night but get this Lazenby gets diarrhea and is unable to hold it in and it stops him from having sex he gets on an endless cycle of taking a crap washing himself, going to the hallway and having to take a crap again the whole night it's hilarious I mean out of all the Bond actors Lazenby is the only one who could have stories quite like these every time I walk to the door I had to turn around and go back to the bathroom every time I walk to the door of course he ends up getting his girl back moves in with her and finds a new job as a car salesman and like everything in Lazenby's life always seem to go things just turn up without him doing anything so he gets scouted by a photographer who thinks he would be fit to be a mill model again Lazenby has no idea or experience in this field but just wings it anyway before he knows it he becomes one of Britain's top models overnight mostly not even realizing where the camera is or what the hell he's even advertising of course this is when the first signs of Lazenby's life truly turning wild start happening as he ends up having to do a modeling gig in Spain with a bunch of chicks and one in particular a German model gets his interest and Lazenby manages to behave himself briefly but he ends up not being strong enough to refuse an offer to come with her on the airport and thus he cheats on his girlfriend and he ends up losing her over this but still though the chick had cheated on him in the past too right I'm not saying that makes things right but are they not more or less even now anyway things get even wilder when George becomes single as he mits up with fellow Australian model Ken Garrity who becomes his wingman in dozens and dozens of schemes to get chicks into treeways sometimes several times during the day ah yes the 60s simpler times a little truth in there is how we truthfully tell you that we want to make love with you and then we dare you to do it it's here where Lazenby gets exposed to LSD at some point and walks out of his apartment naked with a chick there's a line of people on the bus stop going to work on the King's Road and they're all staring at us and I'm like what are you staring at I looked down I had no clothes on through Ken he gets introduced to an agent called Maggie Abbott who is portrayed by none other than James Seymour yes who played solitaire in Live and Let Die it is her who thinks Lazenby is the right type of guy for James Bond because he's very arrogant and sure of himself arrogant and I didn't know that arrogance was a bad word thank you what struck me here is that in this documentary Lazenby never even considered to become James Bond he just took the advice and rolled with it whereas in The Everything or Nothing the untold story documentary Lazenby explained he had nothing on his mind day and night apart from getting the job I think his version of the story in this documentary is probably the one that is told truthfully as this also includes all the sex, violence and drugs that went on before leading up to this point and couldn't be mentioned in the more formal documentary anyway here the famously told story of Lazenby getting the part is shown stealing a suit meant for Sean Connery at his tailor shop getting his hair cut like Connery sneaking past the desk lady up to the casting director Dyson Lowell and saying the famous line I heard you're looking for James Bond he explains to the casting director that he was acting in China, Hungary, Ukraine, Russia and all the places he could think of that he thought they wouldn't be able to check on it's funny that these exact countries get mentioned in the elementary school days of the documentary showcasing he really just used the only knowledge that he had I thought it was quite clever how they incorporated that it struck me how Harry Solzman is depicted as an absolute asshole in this always screaming and short tempered bossing everyone around that treats Lazenby like crap throughout it's very different to how he's usually depicted in Eon documentaries but then again why would they put someone of their own in a bad daylight right? there's also little to no mention of Coby Broccoli in this which I thought was a bit odd because I always believed he was quite involved with Lazenby as well and had some experiences with him but yeah none of that is shown eventually Lazenby ends up telling the truth to director Peter Hunt that he had never acted a day in his life and Hunt starts laughing and against all odds they decide to take Lazenby on a series of screen tests anyway that went on for months they have him swimming, horse riding, running and even get a prostitute to his hotel room to test if he truly was heterosexual because he was a male model of course Lazenby soon proved that everything is in order on that front ultimately Lazenby ends up breaking a stuntman's nose when he was tested for a fighting scene and had cleansed a deal against all odds a regular Australian guy who never graduated and used to work as a car salesman landed the role of James Bond without ever having acted a day in his life it's absolutely extraordinary I love how he calls up his mom after getting the job he just responds in typical down-to-earth Australian fashion I said mom I just got the James Bond job oh did ya? you know your licences run out? one of the first things Lazenby does when landing the role is calling up his ex-girlfriend who is all of a sudden all interested in him again but then again which chick wouldn't be if you just told him you're the new James Bond he said what are you gonna do with my daughter down in the south of France? I said nothing I haven't done before did he just say nothing I haven't done before? yes that's exactly what he said she ends up flying to the south of France for him only for George to be forced to get back to London to do a press conference and departing their ways for the last time it's quite heartbreaking but it does show that this is just the way life is sometimes I think out of all the Bond actors Lazenby is the most relatable to any normal young man you can totally picture yourself being an actor being involved in all these crazy circumstances all of a sudden and being in way over your head because of your big mouth here he is now for the first time on a film set and immediately it's one of the biggest productions in the world following up arguably the biggest star at the time so Lazenby resorts to lots of partying, drinking and girls and gets completely out of control but can you really blame him though? I'm not sure I would have handled it any differently another one of these things I found interesting is that Lazenby is shown to have been extremely hard to work with when shooting the gun barrel he just did it his way with the weird leg down and when asked to do it over in the same way Connery did it he just started fooling around forcing the filmmakers to just go with the weird take that ended up in the final movie I never knew about that the bad relationship between the filmmakers and Lazenby does shine through in the documentary Lazenby never signed a contract to play James Bond so he was able to get away with a lot of stuff like banging pretty much all his co-stars from the Piss Gloria scenes and showing up with a beard at the press conferences he was not the type of Bond that the filmmakers wanted him to be so in the end Solzman tries to get him into a slave contract to sign for seven more Bond films and offered him a million dollars under the table just to sign it however this did mean that Lazenby had to behave and dress in the exact manner that the filmmakers wanted him to and he famously refused it just like that it was a combination of thinking Bond wouldn't survive the upcoming decade of the 70s with the changing times and just plain simply always doing whatever the hell he felt like doing Lazenby just lived his life in his way I think it's hard to imagine turning down a one million dollar paycheck to be the man old men want to be a couple times more but he just did it and I think he just got to respect the man for it and again despite not being a fan of his actual portrayal of Bond in the movie I think he's a legend of how he's lived his personal life the way that he did remember the guy was only expected to live until the age of 12 13 Max yet he accomplished all this by simply living life and having some guts it's a fantastic message Lazenby ends up with the encouraging life lesson you can defy what is expected of you and write your own story he explains that living life on your own terms in your own way is one of the best things that you can do and that just inspires me on so many levels and I'm sure it will inspire many other people too it's a wonderful life story of one of the most extraordinary yet regular guys to have ever played James Bond and I think all fans should absolutely check out this documentary it's well put together it never drags it's funny emotional inspiring it has good music it's just a great story all together so remember let's all just enjoy and live our lives in the ways we want to and who knows maybe someday one of us will end up being the next James Bond here is the George Lazenby do you enjoy my Bond videos and you just can't wait for new Bond content to come up to my channel well support me on Patreon become part of my community and get access to all my latest videos two weeks before the regular viewers get to see it get access to a lot of awesome support and rewards like having monthly Skype calls with me you can find the link in the description and make sure you subscribe to my channel