A poll once selected "Jaws", the steel-toothed assassin played by Richard Kiel in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, as the best-loved James Bond character, with 30% of the vote. Kiel is understandably proud of this fact, as well he might be, given the input he had in shaping the role. Speaking to Geoffrey Macnab, he recalls that Cubby Broccoli recruited him for the role with this pitch: ""The character we have in mind is going to have teeth like tools, maybe like a shark." (Maybe like a shark, and he's called "Jaws"? Does Kiel not know that there's a movie? Is it too late to tell him?) It turns out that Kiel hesitated to take the role because "He wanted to break away from rent-a-giant parts and play - as he puts it - 'regular henchman or villain roles'. However, he eventually managed to talk Broccoli into making Jaws a sympathetic, three-dimensional character rather than just a titan with gleaming metallic molars. 'If I was to play this role, I told him I'd want to give this character who kills people with his teeth a human side to make him more interesting, maybe have him be persevering and frustrated, so he wouldn't become boring. A guy killing people with his teeth could easily become over the top.'" After you've been in the business for a while, you become sensitive to these things.

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