One of the world’s great movie stars, Sir Sean Connery, has died at age 90. Not only the best James Bond actor, which, of course, has been and will always be his legacy, but a terrific actor in many other films as well, some in which he played very much against type, such as period pieces The Man Who Would Be King and Robin and Marian, two of my all-time favorite movies. Others include The Hunt for Red October and his Oscar-winning role in The Untouchables.
I was fortunate to get to interview him once in 1989 for his charming and charismatic Golden Globe-winning role as Harrison Ford’s father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the same year People magazine named him Sexiest Man Alive.
Even before Bond, Connery was playing diverse roles in many movies, including the tough truckers film Hell Drivers, a small role in the war epic The Longest Day, a romantic lead in Another Time, Another Place, and starring and actually singing in the Disney movie Darby O’Gill and the Little People (he would also sing briefly to Ursula Andress in his first 007 role in Dr. No).
The moment he achieved enormous success with Bond and at the peak of his macho popularity in Goldfinger, he was brave enough to go against type and make movies with esteemed directors Alfred Hitchcock (Marnie) and Sidney Lumet (gritty prisoner-of-war drama The Hill.) Towards the end of his run as Bond he made two more powerful films with Lumet, The Anderson Tapes and The Offence.
Connery’s post-Bond career included many notable films such as Murder on the Orient Express, The Name of the Rose, The Presidio, Outland, Highlander, Entrapment, Family Business, Medicine Man, Rising Sun, The Rock, and Finding Forrester. He was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2000.
His screen persona was so powerful that his mere brief appearance in small roles immediately greatly elevated films such as Time Bandits and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Even though this list of film credits dwarfs that of any other actor to play Bond, Connery was also the first and best 007 by far. He established the character in Dr. No in 1962 and would star in five Bond films in six years, an unprecedented run for any star in any film franchise. (These days Bond star Daniel Craig only makes a new Bond film every few years – it is now five years since his last one.) But Connery laid such a firm foundation for the franchise that it has lasted nearly 60 years across 25 films.
Connery took a break from Bond after his fifth, You Only Live Twice, and then returned in 1971 for a record $1 million salary for Diamonds Are Forever that he donated to a Scottish education charity. These six Bond films with Connery all still rank among my top ten favorite Bond films of all time.
He would return one last time in 1983 for a remake of Thunderball with the tongue-in-cheek title of Never Say Never Again under different producers.
It was the original Thunderball in which Connery first appears walking, turning and shooting at the camera in the iconic opening gun barrel sequence. And he tosses off more witticisms and cavalier gestures in this movie than any other, such as when he stops to dump flowers from a vase on one of his victims and makes a comment to a couple at a table where he places a villainess who he turned to take a bullet intended for him while he was dancing with her: “She’s just dead.” Then there is his comment after killing a stalker with a spear gun: “I think he got the point.”
When he complains about being driven recklessly to his hotel, henchwoman Fiona Volpe suggests his whining may be because “Some men just don’t like being driven,” to which Bond rebuts, “No, some men don’t like being taken for a ride.”
From his body language to his line delivery, it’s a perfect example of how a Connery performance was so distinctive from any other.
— By Scott Hettrick