James Bond: THIS star says he was considered to REPLACE Pierce Brosnan over Daniel Craig

Butler replied: “No. I had a meeting for it like 20 years ago. Now I think I’m at a nice ripe old age where they won’t be coming back my way which is fine.”

Kemp said: “But take that, that’s it, you’ve got the meeting and you can be like ‘yeah I was asked. Turned it down.’”

While Butler added: “Listen, here’s the thing, you know what I love is – and I love Bond, I grew up on Bond – but the cool thing with this [the ‘Fallen’ franchise] is that we created our own franchise.

“We created our own Bond and that’s more fun than to have to play Bond and be compared to the others.”

Around 20 years ago was when Pierce Brosnan was coming to the end of his tenure as James Bond.

His last outing was 2002’s Die Another Day, before Daniel Craig was cast as his replacement in 2005 ahead of Casino Royale a year later.

During that early noughties period, Bond producers will have been having meetings and auditions in their search for the next Bond.

This means Butler was in the running at the same time as the incumbent 007.

Interestingly, in the same interview, Butler revealed that Brosnan once drove him into a wall.

The action star said: “I’ve been in car crashes, in fact, Pierce Brosnan – James Bond himself – drove me right into a wall. That was ten years ago.”

The pair stared together in mystery thriller Butterfly on a Wheel.

Tune into Capital Breakfast with Roman Kemp, week days from 6am – 10am across the UK.