The author of the upcoming movie "Solo", William Boyd says that Daniel Day-Lewis is a favorite to play James Bond since he looks just like what original novelist Ian Fleming had in mind.

Fleming, who wrote fourteen Bond books before his death in 1964, wrote that Bond is “tall, lean and rangy” and looks like American singer-songwriter Hoagy Carmichael.

The Belfast Telegraph
quoted Boyd’s comparison of Day-Lewis and Bond, “[Fleming] described Bond on at least three different occasions, I think, as looking like Hoagy Carmichael.” He added, “He is a tall, lean, rangy, very dark-haired, good-looking man. Almost swarthy. And there is a sense in which that image was what he saw Bond looking like. So that’s why I’d choose him.”

Boyd even went so far as to say that Day-Lewis is the closest living representation of what Fleming pictured.

In Bond’s latest adventure, titled Solo, he will travel to west Africa to quell a brewing civil war. Solo will appear on the 60th anniversary of Fleming’s first novel. The plot includes a ‘feverish mission” and a “twisting conspiracy that extends further than Bond ever imagined.”

Solo’s author Boyd suspects that there will be large changes in the novel’s adaptation to the screen. He said about Solo, “It’s set in 1969 and the Bond films are always set in the present day. They’ll never make a retro Bond, I suppose they can take my plot and update it but then it would be different and because it’s set in the 1960’s it gives it a particular flavor.”

Boyd has written eleven novels, many of which have been adapted for screen, including A Good Man in Africa and Any Human Heart.

He has worked with Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig who have all played Bond. Boyd said, “The idea that these somewhat random connections with Fleming and Bond should culminate in my writing a new James Bond novel is irresistibly appealing.”