James Bond filmography of the Clint Eastwood character, Dirty Harry — was chosen for Moore to use in "Live and Let Die" rather than Bond's usual choice of Walther PPK. Spicer says "Roger Moore re-created Bond as an old-style debonair hero, more polished and sophisticated than Connery's incarnation, using the mocking insouciance he had perfected in his role as Simon Templar ... Moore's humour was a throwaway, and certainly in the later films, verged on self-parody. It was an essential strand in the increasingly tongue-in-cheek direction of the series which became more light-hearted, knowing and playfully intertextual". Chapman noted that Moore was the
James Bond filmography long in the tooth", and in December 2007 admitted that he "was only about four hundred years too old for the part". Like Connery, Moore appeared as Bond in seven films; by the time he retired in 1985, he was the oldest actor to play 007 in the Eon series, and his Bond films had earned over at the box office. With the retirement of Roger Moore in 1985, a search for a new actor to play Bond took place that saw a number of actors, including Sam Neill, Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton, audition for the role in 1986.