The 12 Years a Slave actor can project intense charisma and will bring a ruthless impenetrability to a Bond baddie. It's a role he was born to play

Few doubted Javier Bardem's ability to deliver a genuinely sinister performance as James Bond villain Silva in 2012's Skyfall, especially after the Oscar-winner's turn as sociopath hitman Anton Chigurh in the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men.

But there may be some who wonder exactly why 007 producers have picked Chiwetel Ejiofor to play the bad guy in the film's upcoming Sam Mendes-directed sequel.

Ejiofor is now best known for his turn in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, as the captured African-American free man, Solomon Northup. He has generally ploughed his career furrow in British independent cinema, or in supporting roles in Hollywood fare such as 2012 or American Gangster, though he did play a decent-enough bad guy in Alfonso Cuarón's gripping dystopian thriller, Children of Men.

For the proof that Ejiofor can deliver a genuinely iconic Bond villain, however, see 2005's Serenity. This rousing space opera epic was the calling card that should have had Hollywood beating down Joss Whedon's door: instead it took another eight years for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator to be given a decent crack at a big-budget genre movie. He responded with The Avengers, the third-highest-grossing movie of all time.

Serenity, a big-screen sequel to Whedon's superb sci-fi TV series Firefly, featured Ejiofor as a terrifyingly zealous black-ops agent of the ruling Alliance government. Named only as the Operative, his trademark is a penchant for forcing victims to commit hara-kiri via ceremonial sword.

This he achieves via a sudden nerve pinch to the lower back, which causes the unfortunate recipient to first freeze and then gently topple, utterly paralysed, on to the carefully positioned blade. It's the coolest thing since Uma Thurman's five point palm exploding heart technique in Kill Bill 2, and would have been more than worthy of the greatest of Bond villains.

Ejiofor is such a fireball of dread charisma as the utterly impenetrable, ruthlessly singular Operative that it is almost impossible to understand why he was not in the running for every showy villain role of the past decade.

Instead, by the bizarre vagaries of Hollywood in 2014, it has taken a far more subtle role in an art-house production to catapult him into the running once again.

Ejiofor's Englishness might seem to hint at a continuation of themes seen in Skyfall, quite possibly the most British Bond movie of the entire series with its attacks on MI6's London HQ and endgame in the Scottish Highlands. But in reality, this is an actor with a talent for accents that would allow him to play a wide range of nationalities. He also has the physical presence to take on Daniel Craig's 007 himself, as this final fight scene from Serenity confirms. No need for henchmen to do the dirty work here.

Let's hope this isn't a supporting part, as it would be a crying shame if the 36-year-old did not get the chance to move front and centre once again in what will be the 24th official Bond movie.