Michael Jackson tried to convince film bosses to let him play James Bond

Michael Jackson wanted to play James Bond, and tried to convince movie bosses that he could pull it off, according to Hollywood super agent Michael Ovitz.

In new memoir Who Is Michael Ovitz?, he details a bizarre encounter with Jackson, which also involves a bowl of guacamole and Jackson’s trademark black fedora.

Ovitz tells of the meeting between him, Ron Meyer, a former agent himself and now the vice president of NBC Universal.

During Jackson’s pitch to become an action movie star, somehow his hat fell from his head into a large bowl of guacamole.

“As he talked, his hat fell into the guacamole in front of him, and he picked it out and put it back on — unfortunately, with a blob of guacamole attached, which began to slide down the brim,” Ovitz writes.

“Ron Meyer tapped my leg to draw my attention to it, and we all watched in horrified fascination as it slid lower and lower while Michael was pitching us hard on how he was America’s next action hero.

“Then the blob fell off, and Ron totally lost it. I cracked up, too, and Michael stalked out,” Ovitz writes.

“I found him and explained for 15 minutes that we hadn’t been laughing at him. Finally, Michael’s face cleared. ‘OK, Ovitz. OK,’ he said. ‘But I want to play James Bond.’ I am proud to report I didn’t laugh, this time.”

Ovitz continued to try and disaude Jackson, however, telling him ‘[You’re] thinly built, you’re too sensitive, you won’t be credible as a brutal block of stone’.

“You’d be great at it, of course, but it’d be bad for you,” he went on.

The time period would likely put Timothy Dalton as become the Bond in question, taking over from Roger Moore.

And while the Welshman was perhaps not quite ‘a brutal block of stone’, they probably made the right choice in the end.

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