Are you sure about Roger Moore and his “good terms”?
Here is a pic of him taken from A View From A Kill (1985), his last appearance as James Bond:
He did have a mole removed from his face and, moreover, he looked quite…Aged, shall we say? He himself stated in interviews that he was “…only about four hundred years too old for the part”.
As much as I love Roger Moore and his contribution to the 007 saga, I do think he should have left earlier. His acting and 007 plots just got stuck in a vicious circle that kept going on over and over between late seventies and early eighties. That is why, as per his friend James Michael Caine’s words, “[after he left the James Bond franchise] he can’t get a job”.
As per Daniel Craig, on the other hand, he does seem to leave
the role on good terms. Acting as the world’s most famous spy is a tough job indeed and requires mental and physical strength. The impact Craig has had on the world since his first appearance (Casino Royale, 2006) is clearly different from previous ones: his gadget trickery has been reduced to a minimum, he is much more physical than his predecessors, and his acting does not look cheesy at all.
However, there seems to be a toll James Bond takes on each and every actor: repetitivity, lack of plot, a perennial déjà vu feeling. This must be a heavy weight to carry, I assume. Better leave while you still can in order not to get framed and frozen forever in a gunbarrel opening sequence – which is what happened to George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, and perhaps Pierce Brosnan. Sean Connery needed a whole decade to shake 007 off his shoulders.
In my humble opinion, Daniel Craig may succeed in doing what Roger Moore could not: avoiding being typecast. As for the “good terms”, although they have always been granted to leading actors in 007 movies, as far as I can tell, some got to be pigeonholed and some managed to set themselves free.