fans of James Bond will never forget David Hedison. The american actor, who has played two times with CIA agent Felix Leiter in Live and let die (1973) with Roger Moore and then Licence to kill (1989) with Timothy Dalton died in Los Angeles at the age of 92 years. With Jeffrey Wright, they are the only actors to have incarnated on two occasions the lord, friend, and peer-to-sauce yankee, of 007.
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A student of Lee Strasberg
David Hedison was born on 20 may 1927 in Providence, Rhode Island in the United States. Very early on, he was fascinated by the scene. He will tell later that this passion was triggered by the charism of Tyrone Power in Bloody Arenas (1941). After doing his military service in the u.s. navy, he decided to complete his artistic education in the following theatre courses from legendary professors Sansford Meisner and Lee Strasberg .
After the debut on stage crowned by a Theater World Award for her performance in the play A month in the country , he is finally spotted by the film. In 1958, he plays with as much force as narrowly as a scientist victim of his own experiences in black-flies by Kurt Neumann. Then he makes beautiful forays into the cinema of science fiction with appearances noted in The lost World (1960), Ed Malone and then in a popular tv series in the United States, Voyage to the bottom of the sea (1964-1968), which tells the odyssey of the nuclear submarine Neptune.
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Timothy Dalton and David Hedison in James Bond’s Licence to kill , in 1989. Everett/©Rue des Archives/BCA A friendship with Roger Moore
during The 1960s, very prolific, David Hedison binds friendship with Roger Moore, who also became a star of the small screen for the british television with the series cultissimes Ivanohé, The Saint and Yours as ever in the early 1970s.
This complicity in the life will find its expression in two missions of James Bond. Introduced by his friend from the principals of Eon Productions, David Hedison, in the skin of Felix Leiter, friendly alter ego of 007 to the mode yankee, will play first Live and let die , the first Bond of Roger Moore, then about sixteen years after, Licence to kill , this time with Timothy Dalton. In this role it will prove to be perfect. Because that philosopher, in the life, David Hedison was perhaps the only one able to the screen and have fun and sometimes even make fun of the escapades of the heroes invented by Ian Fleming.
● Live and let die ( Live and Let Die ) de Guy Hamilton, 1973, with Roger Moore, Yaphet Kotto, Jane Seymour, David Hedison…
● Licence to kill ( License to Kil l ) John Glen, in 1989, with Timothy Dalton, Carey Lowell, Robert David, David Hedison…
