Felix Leiter is an American CIA agent who frequently works with James Bond 007. He appears in the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, and several others.In the novels, Leiter is described as a straw-haired Texan with a hawk nose and a ready grin, approximately the same age as Bond. He is used to introduce Bond and the audience to American customs, and to give someone for Bond to explain things to (such as the rules of baccarat in Casino Royale).In the first adaptation of Casino Royale (1954), he and Bond changed places, so that Jimmy Bond worked for the CIA and Clarence Leiter for MI6.Jack Lord was not asked to return as Felix Leiter in Goldfinger (1964), because the producers thought he would overshadow Sean Connery. Cec Linder took the role, after switching places with Austin Willis, the actor for whom it was originally intended. Having a different actor as Felix Leiter worked so well that it became a tradition, allowing the audience to be surprised and mystified by Leiter's initial appearance. Many humorous incidents would result from this, such as in Thunderball, where Bond attacks Felix to keep him from addressing him by name. The audience would not recognize the new actor as Felix, and thus would briefly think that Bond had attacked a potential assailant, not one of his allies.The plot of License to Kill revolves around Bond avenging a brutal attack on Leiter, in which Leiter's new bride is murdered and he loses an arm and a leg to a shark. To give the audience an emotional anchor to a character who is mutilated so early in the story, it was decided to have David Hedison, who had played the part in Live and Let Die, play the role again.