Live and Let Die (film) woman, and after thinking of Catherine Deneuve, Jane Seymour, who was in the TV series "The Onedin Line", was cast for the role. Yaphet Kotto was cast while doing another movie for United Artists, "Across 110th Street". Kotto reported one of the things he liked in the role was Kananga's interest in the occult, "feeling like he can control past, present and future". Mankiewicz created Sheriff J.W. Pepper to add a comic relief character. Portrayed by Clifton James, Pepper appeared again in "The Man with the Golden Gun". "Live and Let Die" is also the first of two films featuring
Live and Let Die (novel) which for sheer excitement have not been surpassed by any modern writer of this kind". The reviewer for "The Daily Telegraph" felt that "the book is continually exciting, whether it takes us into the heart of Harlem or describes an underwater swim in shark-infested waters; and it is more entertaining because Mr Fleming does not take it all too seriously himself". George Malcolm Thompson, writing in "The Evening Standard", believed "Live and Let Die" to be "tense; ice-cold, sophisticated; Peter Cheyney for the carriage trade". Writing in "The New York Times", Anthony Boucher—a critic described by Fleming's biographer, John Pearson,