Remembering Sir Roger Moore’s talents
Roger Moore often described his range as an actor as ‘‘everything from ‘raises left eyebrow’ to ‘raises right eyebrow’.’’
It’s hard to imagine any of today’s leading men appraising their own talents in such wry terms, but it’s hard to imagine Moore becoming a leading man - and in due course, an unimpeachable national treasure - at any other point in history than he did.
It hardly needs to be said that Moore is best remembered for his time playing James Bond, in seven films between 1973 and 1985.
He’s rarely held up as the definitive 007, which is neither here or there.
What’s certain is the character wouldn’t have survived the Seventies and Eighties without
him. After the fraught post-war years, and with a newly flowering ease about what it meant to be British in the world, Sean Connery’s severe take on the secret agent had run its course, while George Lazenby’s barely left the blocks. Moore made Bond a playboy. In fact, the role was re-tailored by Eon Productions to his existing screen persona, after the studio coaxed him away from the television shows - such as The Saint and The Persuaders! - where he’d been honing it for 15 years.
The Cold War was winding down, and Moore was a Bond for a world under threat from lone crackpots rather than forbidding nation states.
The eyebrows, of course, were integral.
One of the few scenes he felt discomfort filming was in The Man With the Golden Gun (1974), when he had to threaten to break Maud Adams’s arm: that’s a Connery move, not a Moore one.
But only Moore could have had Bond pull a cheese and vegetable flan from the refrigerator, in A View to a Kill (1985), and drily call it a Quiche du Cabinet - or set the tone for a cameo from ‘‘Margaret Thatcher’’ (played by the actress Janet Brown) in For Your Eyes Only (1981).
That’s not to say Moore didn’t admire Connery’s earlier take on the character, though he rarely missed a chance to get a dig in.
‘‘Sean is a good actor,’’ he once said.
‘‘It’s a pity I can’t understand what he’s saying.’’
The conditions in the showbusiness ecosystem necessary for Moore to arise were right precisely once.
Fortunately for us, he was ready and waiting to seize them.
After six months at Rada, three years of national service and a brief stint as a knitwear model, this Stockwell-born, working-class lad arrived in Hollywood in the last days of the old studio system.
Moore was a contract player at MGM from 1954 to 1956.
He’d originally signed for seven years, but they chucked him after two, because the films weren’t working out.
The sacking was to his immeasurable advantage.
The studio era was waning but while Moore had missed the golden-age heyday, the era’s residual glamour had rubbed off on him.
That’s what he brought - along with, crucially, no baggage whatsoever - to the world of television, where starring roles in Ivanhoe, The Alaskans and Maverick awaited.
The Saint made him a household name in 1962, while The Persuaders! with Tony Curtis, further honed his eyebrow-arching wit.
His favourite film - and one to seek out if you haven’t seen it - was The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), a psychological thriller he made after the final series of The Saint, which let him have fun with his screen persona.
Moore plays a city executive whose psyche starts to crumble when, after a car crash, he believes a silver-tongued doppelganger is encroaching on his life. Perhaps, in a warmer way, that’s how Moore came to feel about Bond.
The star and his screen persona were inextricable, and we were fortunate to share a world with them both.
❚ Robbie Colin is a film critic for The Telegraph