Grantchester star James Norton addresses rumours he could be the next Jame Bond

James Norton is having the last laugh after going from unattractive, bullied schoolboy to Bond hopeful.

The Happy Valley and Grantchester star takes his fame seriously, saying being described as a sex symbol ‘is really nothing to do with me and everything to do with others’.

Smouldering at home for a Man About Town shoot, he continued: ‘As soon as people deem you a pin-up they expect you to have this extra special power, to walk into every room powerfully, but you don’t.’

James, 35, attended the Catholic boarding school Ampleforth College, in Yorkshire.

‘I was the kid at the all-boys boarding school who was bullied, whose younger years were definitely spent at the bottom of the pile feeling unattractive and disempowered,’ he said.

‘When people credit me with having “a pin-up pout” now, it doesn’t mean anything because my bones are not that.

‘But I do have moments when I’m being shot by a great photographer, wearing great clothes, when the little unattractive bullied kid in me is laughing his f***ing head off!’

As for his 007 hopes, he added: ‘For that younger version of me inside of me, it’s fun and flattering and ridiculous and great.’

James feels there is a spectrum to fame.

‘You’ve got Leonardo DiCaprio at one end and a jobbing actor at the other — which I was — and there are various iterations of fame between. I’m somewhere in the middle,’ he said.

Man About Town is out now.

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