Felix Leiter (pronounced Fee-Lex Lighter) is a fictional character created by Ian Fleming in the James Bond books, films, and other media.

Felix Leiter, James Bond's CIA ally and friend, played a part in six of the Fleming novels; he is introduced in Casino Royale as being thin, tall, about 35 years old[2] and a former U.S. Marine who was working with the Joint Intelligence Staff of NATO.

[4] Physically, Fleming describes Leiter in Casino Royale: "a mop of straw-coloured hair lent his face a boyish look which closer examination contradicted".

[7] Academic Jeremy Black agrees, although points out that the Bond and Leiter relationship suggested "a far smoother working of the Anglo-American alliance than was in fact the case.

[10] Fleming's second novel, Live and Let Die, reveals that in his early twenties, Leiter wrote a few pieces on Dixieland jazz for the New York Amsterdam News.

[12] Espionage scholar Rupert Allason, writing as Nigel West, noted that Leiter's involvement in a domestic U.S. matter was a breach of the CIA's charter, as laid out in the National Security Act of 1947.

[13] After the shark attack, Leiter returned in Diamonds Are Forever with a hook for his missing hand and a prosthetic leg; as he had lost his gun hand, he was no longer with the CIA, but employed as a private detective by Pinkerton Detective Agency,[14] although he was on the reserve of the CIA and was recalled for Goldfinger, Thunderball and The Man with the Golden Gun.

[15] Fleming had flown to the US in August 1954 to research the background to Diamonds Are Forever; his friend Ernest Cuneo introduced him to a rich socialite, William Woodward Jr., who drove a Studillac—a Studebaker with a powerful Cadillac engine.

According to Bond scholar Henry Chancellor, "the speed and comfort of it impressed Ian, and he shamelessly appropriated this car" for Leiter to drive in the novel.

[19][20] The first screen interpretation of the Leiter character was in the 1954 CBS one-hour television adventure Casino Royale, broadcast as part of the dramatic anthology series Climax Mystery Theater, which ran between October 1954 and June 1958.

[30] Lord played Leiter in a "swaggering" fashion,[31] according to Smith and Lavington, and they considered him "excellent, an effective American version of James Bond.

"[36] The fourth film in the Eon series, Thunderball, was the third to portray Leiter and the producers chose a third actor to play the role, Rik Van Nutter.

"[40] Benson also concurs, but complains that although Van Nutter is a piece of successful casting, "the script ... does not give the character any real depth".

After Sanchez escapes, he orders his men to rape and murder Della and torture Leiter by lowering him into a tank containing a great white shark — an event transferred from the original plot of Live and Let Die.

Bond finds Leiter maimed but alive, and seeks revenge on Sanchez, paving the way for the rest of the film's plot.

Early script drafts for Quantum of Solace gave Wright a larger role, but his screen time was restricted by on-set rewrites.

The character (as portrayed by Wright) makes his final appearance in No Time to Die, in which he asks the retired Bond's help in finding a missing MI6 scientist who was kidnapped by terrorist Lyutsifer Safin's men.

He briefly makes an appearance in Permission to Die (1989), later returning in A Silent Armageddon (1992), playing a rather large role in The Quasimodo Gambit (1995), a brief comeback in Eidolon (2016), and at the latest, in Black Box (2017).