Verity-Jane Dearsley as Agnes Roger Moore as Radio Announcer Voice David Schneider as Bar Waiter William Hope as State Department Official Emily Mortimer as Woman on the plane Production Film adaptations of Leslie Charteris' anti-hero Simon Templar (The Saint) date back to the late 1930s when RKO Radio Pictures launched a popular series of B-movies with a succession of different actors playing the lead role. After that, save for two unsuccessful French attempts at launching new film series, the character was confined to television: The Saint, a 1960s series starring Roger Moore; Return of the Saint, a 1970s updating starring Ian Ogilvy; a failed 1987 pilot for American TV, The Saint in Manhattan starring Andrew Clarke; and a set of feature-length made-for-television adventures co-produced in the United Kingdom, Canada, France, West Germany, Australia in 1989 starring Simon Dutton. Of these, the Moore series remained the definitive television adaptation. In the mid-1980s, tabloid gossip newspapers such as the National Enquirer reported that Moore was planning to produce a new Saint movie, with Pierce Brosnan (then known for playing the Templar-influenced character Remington Steele on TV and later of James Bond fame) being considered for the role, though nothing came of this project. The reference work The Saint: A Complete History by Burl Barer (McFarland 1992) was written at a time when another set of plans were under way to launch a new Saint film series, which would have been faithful to the original writings of Leslie Charteris and feature characters from the original books. This project also failed. A few years later, Paramount Pictures' attempt to make a film of The Saint started with the powerhouse above-the-line team of Robert Evans as producer, Steven Zaillian as writer and Sydney Pollack as director. Ralph Fiennes - hot from Schindler's List and Quiz Show - was offered $1 million for the lead, but eventually passed. In a 1994 interview for Premiere magazine, Fiennes said the screenplay—racing fast cars, breaking into Swiss banks was nothing he hadn't seen before. Robert Evans left the project—although, contractually, his name remains on the final film's credits—and David Brown (Jaws, Driving Miss Daisy) took over. A new story was commissioned from Jonathan Hensleigh (Die Hard with a Vengeance), which cast Simon Templar as a mercenary hired by a billionaire Russian oil and gas tycoon to steal the secret of cold fusion from an eccentric but beautiful American scientist.