James Bond is the quintessential British spy. He harks back to the days when Britain had an empire and a hefty political influence on the world. Even if the colonies were gone the British were still present in every country, peeking in and meddling in every plot and foiling the bad guys time and time again. The idea of friendship between the UK and the US is always handled carefully in the Bond movies. The relationship is clearly one based on expediency than any real affection. The only American character to repeatedly appear in the franchise is Felix Leiter.

Felix is actually a friend of James Bond, perhaps partly because both men are willing to flout the orders of their superiors in order to get the job done. He appears throughout the novel and film series but he pops up in various guises and is played by a host of different actors.

In the novels Felix is a Texan who graduated from the Marines into the CIA. He helps Bond defeat SMERSH in Casino Royale. He loses an arm and a leg in Live and Let Die after being fed to a shark. He then pops up as a detective with a prosthetic limb and hook hand in Diamonds are Forever before returning to the CIA in Thunderball. His last appearance was in The Man with the Golden Gun.

In the movies Felix has slightly better luck but his relationship with Bond is less straightforward. He is played by a variety of actors and seems to flit between being an accomplished agent type and being a gung ho glorified cop. The low point for Leiter comes in License to Kill where his new bride is raped and murdered and he is fed to a shark. He was dropped from the series after this film until the Casino Royale reboot which ignored the previous events.

There have been eight different actors in the role over the years. Jack Lord was the first to play Leiter and apparently he demanded a bigger role and co-star billing for Goldfinger which led to the part being recast. The casting of a new actor for each film became something of a tradition until David Hedison reprised the role he had taken on in 1973 with Live and Let Die to make the 1989 release License to Kill. The most recent Leiter is Jeffrey Wright and he looks set to the take record with a third appearance as Felix in the next Bond film.

For a while the introduction of Leiter in each new Bond was something the film makers would mess around with. Since it was a new actor every time the audience never knew it was him beforehand. The idea of bringing Hedison back was to make the horrors which would befall him more emotionally affecting for the audience because, in theory, they would recognise him even though he last played the part over 15 years before.

Felix generally only has a small part in each film but he often helps Bond at a key moment. It will be interesting to see what befalls Jeffrey Wright’s Leiter as he gets tangled up in an uneasy friendship with Bond.