`Skyfall` deserves an Oscar: Timothy Dalton

London: Actor Timothy Dalton, who played James Bond twice in the 1980s, says the newest James Bond film `Skyfall` deserves to win one of the major Academy Awards.

The 68-year-old actor played the superspy in `The Living Daylights` and `Licence to Kill` and he backed current 007 Daniel Craig`s performance, reported Daily Express online. "It is absolutely time for Bond to get proper attention at the Oscars. On almost every level this Bond movie `Skyfall` is right at the forefront of what cinema is capable of. The film is an absolutely modern James Bond, a movie truly of its time. Daniel Craig is fantastic and it feels very real. It has also got a great story about M with a nice streak of cynicism. I thought the film was fabulous," he said. Dalton also said that his own Bond films may have been "a forerunner" for the more serious Bond films of the current Craig era. "A lot of people have said Licence to Kill was a forerunner of Bond today and in a sense that is what producer Cubby Broccoli and I were trying to do. "The Bond movies were becoming pastiches of themselves but they were still successful and people were not ready to embrace a new formula. There was a lot of innate resistance to change," he added. PTI