Timothy Peter Dalton is a British stage and screen actor. He is best known for playing Edward Fairfax Rochester in the series Jane Eyre, James Bond in the films The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989), and for roles in Shakespearean films and plays. Timothy Dalton's father, an Englishman, was a captain in the secret intelligence service, the Special Operations Executive, during the Second World War, but he resigned immediately after the war and went into the advertising business. His mother is American, of Irish and Italian descent. At school Timothy was interested in aviation and volunteered in the British youth military organization the Air Training Corps. After finishing school in 1964, the eighteen-year-old Dalton joined Michael Croft's National Youth Theatre, where he performed for two years while also studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but he left without graduating and moved to the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. In 1966 Timothy Dalton made his television debut, and in 1968 came his film debut in the historical film The Lion in Winter, in which Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole shone with magnificent performances; the film was also an acting breakthrough for Anthony Hopkins. In the 1970s Dalton appeared in many films, including several Spanish and Italian ones, worked in television, where he appeared extensively in historical productions, and performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Prospect Theater company.

In 1978 he appeared in his first American film, Sextette. A milestone for the actor was the science-fiction film Flash Gordon (1980). In the 1980s Dalton's career on British television reached its peak after the series Jane Eyre (1983) on the BBC channel. In 1987 the actor took the role that brought him worldwide fame, James Bond, in the film The Living Daylights, giving the legendary character new traits: in his portrayal Bond became more sentimental and human, although, in Sean Connery's opinion, Dalton lacked the charisma of a "tough guy" for the role of Agent 007. Dalton accepted the role because the second candidate, Pierce Brosnan, was tied to a television contract. A few years later the situation repeated itself in reverse: Dalton was busy in television, and Brosnan was cast as Bond. In the 1990s, in the television film Scarlett, a loose sequel to Gone with the Wind, Timothy Dalton brilliantly played Rhett Butler, the role that had once made Clark Gable famous. Other notable works by the actor in the 1990s include the detective film The Man Who Wouldn't Die (1993), the European project The King's Whore (1990), the episode "Werewolf Concert" of Tales from the Crypt (1994), and The Beautician and the Beast (1997).