While he wasn’t too attached to Bond, Ralph Fiennes would eventually land a role that he’s still covetous of to this very day, Voldemort in the Harry Potter franchise.
As the legal battle over the James Bond series flared up yet again in the late ’80s, the delay between License To Kill and what would have been Timothy Dalton’s third Bond film eventually lead to the actor’s contract expiring without any attempt at renewal.
Still, he is the current M in the Daniel Craig era of films, so you could say that this was fate.
Believe it or not, we almost had actor Ralph Fiennes playing the role, as he admitted in an interview in Seven Magazine, via The Telegraph, that he was approached by the series’ producers.