02 Felix Leiter
On the page: Introduced in Casino Royale (1953).
Fleming’s Leiter is about thirty-five, tall and thin, with a bony frame, straw-coloured hair and grey eyes. His loose-hanging suit prompts a comparison with Frank Sinatra; the impression of a falcon suggests speed beneath his unhurried manner. [1]
On screen: Jack Lord, Cec Linder, Rik Van Nutter, Norman Burton, David Hedison, John Terry and Jeffrey Wright in the EON films. [4]
The changing casting makes Felix an unusually useful test of what “the same character” means. His appearance varies considerably, while his place beside Bond remains recognisable. Wright’s understated authority is particularly far from a literal recreation of the blond literary figure, yet the friendship needs no explanatory machinery to work.
A Casino Royale portrait belongs to Leiter’s earlier, uninjured life. Later literary Leiter has a hook in place of his right hand; Thunderball states the side explicitly. The shark attack originates in Live and Let Die, but the films use the episode in Licence to Kill, with Hedison’s Leiter. [5, 6, 4]
That migration is a fine example of adaptation across titles: a recognisable Fleming incident can appear decades later under a different name. A portrait caption should specify which stage of Leiter’s life it represents. Otherwise an accurate early portrait can be mistaken for an incomplete later one.
