Bond portrayal seen as quintessential

Actor

SEAN CONNERY was the ruggedly handsome Scottish actor who shot to international stardom in the 1960s after introducing himself to movie audiences as ‘‘Bond, James Bond’’ and later won an Academy Award playing a Prohibitionera Irish American cop in The Untouchables.

Connery died peacefully in his sleep while in the Bahamas, his family confirmed to the BBC. He was 90.

A commanding screen presence throughout his long career, Connery came to define British novelist Ian Fleming’s dashing and deadly secret agent who preferred his vodka martinis shaken, not stirred.

Other actors have portrayed Bond in films — David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig — but for many moviegoers, there was only one 007.

A tuxedoclad Connery famously introduced himself as Bond to a beautiful young woman — and to the audience — while playing the card game chemin de fer in Dr No, the

1962 actionthriller that launched one of the most successful movie franchises of all time.

Connery played Bond in six more films From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and after vowing to leave Bond behind Never Say Never Again (1983).

‘‘For most people, the first Bond was the best, and it’s not that the others weren’t great, but Sean Connery put a stamp on it,’’ film scholar and author Jeanine Basinger, who headed the film studies programme at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, told The Times.

Noting the ‘‘sly, tongueincheek humour’’ Connery injected into the role, Basinger said ‘‘so many great male stars, whenever they can bring that element of humour into their persona, somehow it gives them a longevity. They take the role beyond the hero, the action figure, and make it human.’’

Other actors who played

Bond had the humour, but Connery’s Bond also had ‘‘the cruel edge, the authentic sort of danger that was associated with the books’’.

Connery acknowledged that crucial ingredient, telling the

Chicago SunTimes in 1996: ‘‘The person who plays Bond has to be dangerous. If there isn’t a sense of threat, you can’t be cool.’’

The phenomenal success of the Bond films inspired other spy flicks such as James Coburn’s ‘‘Flint’’ spoofs and the ‘‘Matt Helm’’ films starring Dean Martin, as well as a spate of TV series, including The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, Mission: Impossible and I Spy.

More than three decades later, Connery was the hairychested inspiration for Austin Powers, the outrageously funny British secret agent created and played by comedian Mike Myers in a series of spymovie spoofs.

When Connery received the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 2006, the Canadianborn Myers, wearing a kilt in Connery’s honour, told the actor he was his father’s ‘‘hero because you are a man’s man’’.

Indeed, and therein lies Connery’s enduring appeal to both male and female moviegoers.

As film critic Pauline Kael told People magazine in 1989: ‘‘Connery looks absolutely confident in himself as a man. Women want to meet him, and men want to be him.’’

In 1989, the same year Connery appeared as Harrison Ford’s whitebearded father in

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, People magazine proclaimed the then59yearold actor to be the Sexiest Man Alive.

Director Steven Spielberg told GQ magazine earlier that year: ‘‘There are only seven genuine movie stars in the world today, and Sean is one of them.’’

Although the Bond films brought him unexpected fame and fortune, Connery baulked at being known only as 007.

Even during the 1960s peak of Bondmania, he starred in films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller Marnie;

Sidney Lumet’s World War 2 drama set in a British military prison, The Hill; and Irvin Kershner’s offbeat comedy, Fine Madness.

‘‘I am not James Bond,’’ a frustrated Connery told the press before flying to Japan to shoot his fifth Bond epic, You Only Live Twice (1967), which he announced would be his last time playing 007.

But Connery returned to the role four years later in Diamonds Are Forever. Among the inducements: a thenprincely $US1.25 million and a percentage of the film’s gross profits.

He reportedly gave his entire salary for the film to the Scottish International Education Trust, a foundation he cofounded in 1970 to provide scholarships for underprivileged Scottish youth.

However, he turned down a reported $US5 million to star in the next Bond film, Live and Let Die, in which Roger Moore took over the role of Bond.

During the ’70s, he helped kick his Bond image in a string of films, including most notably The Wind and the Lion, The Man Who Would Be King and Robin and Marian.

In 1988, Connery took home the Oscar for best actor in a supporting role as the ageing, streetwise Irish beat cop Jimmy Malone in The Untouchables.

Over the next dozen years, he continued to work frequently in films, including The Hunt for Red October, The Russia House, Medicine Man, Just Cause, The Rock, Playing by Heart and Entrapment.

He also was an executive producer or producer on more than a half dozen films, from Medicine Man (1992) to The

ALeague of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003).

In his later years, Connery received numerous accolades, including a Kennedy Centre Honour in 1999.

His support of the Scottish National Party, which campaigns for Scottish independence, was believed by some to have long delayed his knighthood, which finally came in 2000, making him Sir Sean Connery. Connery reportedly decided to retire from acting in 2005, although he provided the title voice for the 2006 animated comedy short Sir Billi the Vet. He reportedly turned down portraying Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings series.

Over the years, Connery was dogged by allegations he was a chauvinist, in part due to a controversial statement he made in a 1965 Playboy interview when he was asked how he felt about roughing up a woman, as Bond sometimes had to do.

‘‘I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman — although I don’t recommend doing it in the same way you’d hit a man,’’ he said.

‘‘An openhanded slap is justified — if all other alternatives fail and there has been plenty of warning.’’

The slapping quote resurfaced from time to time, including during a television interview in the 1980s with Barbara Walters, who asked whether Connery thought slapping a woman was ‘‘good’’.

‘‘I don’t think it’s good,’’ he replied, ‘‘but I don’t think it’s bad. It depends entirely on the circumstances . . .’’

Asked if he ever slapped his wife at the time, artist Micheline Roquebrune, he said: ‘‘She doesn’t provoke it.’’

Connery was married to actress Diane Cilento, with whom he had a son, actor Jason Connery, from 196273. He married Roquebrune, whom he met during a Moroccan golf tournament, in 1975. — Los Angeles Times