List of recurring characters in the James Bond film series
The James Bond film series is a British series of spy films based on the fictional character of MI6 agent James Bond, "007", who originally appeared in a series of books by Ian Fleming. There have been twenty-five films in total released between 1962 and 2021 and produced by Eon Productions, which now holds the adaptation rights to all of Fleming's Bond novels. Bond has been portrayed in these films by six actors: Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig. Several supporting  characters that have appeared many times in the series, such as M, Q, and Miss Moneypenny, played by different actors across the twenty-seven films. As these are MI6 posts, not character names, some of the actor changes reflect an in-universe replacement. Such change was explicit for M in "GoldenEye" (1995), with Judi Dench's character referred to as a newcomer, and in "Skyfall" (2012), as Ralph Fiennes' character Gareth Mallory replaces Dench's character as M; it was explicit for Q in "Die Another Day" (2002), as John Cleese's character replaces Desmond Llewelyn's Q after being  his apprentice in "The World Is Not Enough" (1999). There is only one clear case of a single M, Q, or Moneypenny character switching actor: when Q, Major Boothroyd, switches from Peter Burton in "Dr. No" (1962) to Desmond Llewelyn in "From Russia with Love" (1963).