Mr. Bean, the character Rowan Atkinson is most famous for by far, once tried to feed his friends sugar and vinegar because he forgot to buy champagne. He also once tried to paint his apartment by placing a paint can in the middle of the room and dropping in a stick of dynamite. But none of that assorted strangeness prepared me for this even weirder fact: Rowan Atkinson's first big-screen role was in a Bond movie.

He was already a budding TV star in the U.K. at that point, thanks to his late-1970s sketch series, "Not the Nine O'Clock News," but had yet to break into cinema.

In 1983, he was cast in the Bond franchise's "Never Say Never Again," which brought Sean Connery back to the suave spy role after a prolonged absence. Because of a legal loophole regarding the rights, "Never Say Never Again" was made by a different production company at the same time Roger Moore ("Octopussy," 1983) was making the official Bond films. As a result, "Never" has a noticeably different — lighter — tone, and is generally not considered part of the big-screen Bond continuity.

Casting Atkinson in this offbeat Bond film makes sense because his character is a bit of a bumbler, a parody of other silly — and certainly less sexy — ineffectual British government officials. Nonetheless, seeing him acting next to action legend Connery is a surprise.

Being privy to this knowledge also adds a bit of a new spin on "Johnny English" (2003) and its sequels, which featured Atkinson in the role of the dapper and heroic titular secret agent. All three films were big successes — maybe because Atkinson trained for the role next to the very best.

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