The man with the Golden son
As an actor, he was no 007. But as boss of Scotland’s new £1m film studio, he is set to make his famous dad...
W HEN he was a pupil at Gordonstoun, the stern, far-flung boarding school in Moray whose alumni include several generations of the Royal Family, Jason Connery started acting.
‘I came up with something called the Inter-House where the girls’ house joined the boys’ house and put plays on,’ he told the Los Angeles Times in 2017. ‘That’s actually carried on today.’ Yet while the young Connery was clearly proud of his achievements, there were two people he didn’t tell: his parents.
‘I was frightened to tell them,’ he said. ‘Then I got into the Bristol big drama school and then of course I had to tell them.’
It is perhaps understandable that Connery would be nervous to tell his father that he intended to follow in his footsteps.
For Sir Sean Connery – the man who first embodied James Bond, won an Oscar, starred in The Man Who Would Be King and was named Sexiest Man of the Century according to People magazine – is the actor’s actor, the Scottish star who has, for more than half a century, shone brightest in Hollywood.
When the young Jason did finally pluck up the courage to confess his passion for treading the boards to his family, his father was less than effusive.
‘My dad basically said, “Look, the thing about acting is, it’s a tough profession. If you really don’t want to do it, you’ll find out soon.”
‘I know what that means because it’s tough going into a call room and sort of exposing yourself, so to speak, the way you do when you are auditioning and stuff.’
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that in recent years, after a burst of fame in the 1980s with Robin of Sherwood, Connery junior has more or less retired from acting. That doesn’t mean he has given up on the business of show, however. Far from it.
This week, it was announced the 57year-old, along with producer Bob Last, had been given the go-ahead to set up Scotland’s newest film studio.
First Stage Studios, which will be based at the Port of Leith in Edinburgh, will receive £1million investment from Scottish Screen and include five sound stages. Headed up by Connery it will, it is hoped, promote Scottish-made productions and give the tartan film industry a muchneeded shot in the arm. ‘There is no question Scotland needs a film studio,’ Connery said on Tuesday.
‘I could not be more excited to be involved in bringing it to fruition.’
It has been a long road for Connery, who has, at times, struggled to step out from beneath his parents’ considerable shadow.
His mother, the beautiful actress Diane Cilento, was Sir Sean’s first wife and a well-known name in her own right.
Born in Australia, she was nominated for an Oscar and won a Tony award for her portrayal of Helen of Troy in Jean Giraudoux’s Tiger at the Gates on Broadway in 1955. When she met Sir Sean in 1960, she had already been married once and had a daughter.
SHE described Sir Sean, who at the time was starting to make a name for himself in Hollywood as a suave up-and-coming actor, as ‘dangerous but fun’, and they married in 1962.
Later that year Sir Sean made his first appearance as James Bond in Dr No, and Jason was born less than 12 months later.
But the marriage was doomed, almost from the start.
‘I didn’t want to get married,’ Cilento said once. ‘I had been married before and already had a daughter, and I was looking forward to being a single parent.
‘It was Sir Sean who insisted. Where he came from, if you fathered a child, you had to get married.’
Much later in life, Cilento complained that she would ‘stay at home all day waiting for [Sir Sean] to come home with his golfing buddies,’ and alleged that he had been violent towards her.
‘He left me lying on the bathroom floor all night while he slept in our bed,’ she said.
‘I was totally confused as well as bruised – I had never been treated like that in my whole life, and he was a big strong guy, I was about a third of his size.
‘The trouble was that we never talked it through, we just avoided the subject. That was a mistake, because it festered away between us and eventually destroyed us.’
The marriage fell apart in 1973, and clearly had a strong impact on the young Connery.
He describes the divorce as a ‘grim memory’, and says he was conscious of a gulf between his parents at a young age.
‘Look, my parents divorced,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how, but we are a sum of all of the things that happen to us. Our perspectives are predicated by our history.
‘So, in that sense, certainly experiences I’ve had of course are expressed in the stories I tell.’
Years later he directed a film, Tommy’s Honour, about the complex relationship between pioneering Scottish golfing champions Old Tom Morris and his son Young Tom Morris.
‘[In the film] there is Old Tom, this statesman of the game, and Tommy, a young man who is trying to make his way in the world.
‘When my father was in his prime, and I was trying to act as well, there is a parallel there.’
Following the divorce, Cilento initially took Jason and her daughter Giovanna back to Australia with her. But Connery later insisted that his son attend Gordonstoun.
‘I’ve seen him quoted, saying he didn’t give Jason money because he didn’t want him to grow up as a rich man’s son, but he was a rich man’s son and, to underline that, he sent him to a school with other rich men’s sons,’ Cilento, who died in 2011, said once.
‘And the first thing they did was give Jason a cheque book, to teach him how to handle the money they expected his father to give him. Jason didn’t know what to do with it.’
Indeed, his mother alleges that when the young Connery started acting, he was driving a ‘clapped-out car’ to get to auditions, and that when Sir Sean told his son that he would only get acting work because of the Connery name and in response he told him he’d change it, his father ‘went ballistic’.
Intriguingly, Connery himself has denied his mother’s claims.
In 2008 he said of his father: ‘He and I have never had a conversation where he said, “You will never receive a penny,” or anything to that effect. That is simply a lie.
‘I am truly sick of reading about my father and our relationship and of his being portrayed as some sort of monster or tyrant who rules my life by “cutting me off from his wealth”.’
Sir Sean himself was also moved to step in, saying ‘I never told him I wasn’t going to leave him a penny or said he only had the career he has because of the family name.
‘Jason happens to have talent on his own.’
CURIOUSLY, however, observers noted that when Sir Sean’s autobiography, Being A Scot, was published in 2008, it contained not one mention of his son.
Connery’s relationship with his father has clearly had its complexities. They often played golf together – indeed Connery says that some of his favourite memories of his childhood in Scotland were out on the fairway with his dad – but even that could be fraught with tension.
‘My dad’s adage is, ‘If you are not going to play to win, what is the point of playing? But he is also incredibly fair,’ he said once.
Connery recalls how, when he was 14 years old, he played his father at tennis, and for the first time had the chance to beat him.
‘To this day I don’t know if I did this deliberately, but I hit the ball into the net to lose the game.
He looked at me as we were picking up the balls and he said, “You don’t have to do that”.
‘In essence, he thought I didn’t
want to win, because I didn’t want to take that from him.’
After studying at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Connery took jobs in theatre and low-budget films, making his big screen debut in a film entitled The Lords of Discipline, set in a US military academy and starring Bill Paxton.
Advice from his famous Dad came occasionally, he says, but was never overbearing.
‘Acting is a very personal thing – I learnt a lot just from being around him,’ Connery said. ‘He came and saw me in plays. He would say whether he thought I was doing a good job, but it wasn’t as if he said, “this is how you should act”.
Connery’s big break came with his part as the second Robin Hood in the final series of the TV show Robin of Sherwood.
A role as Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, in a TV drama followed, along with more theatre roles. But mainstream success, certainly the type his father enjoyed, still eluded him.
In 1996, while living in Los Angeles, he married actress Mia Sara, best known as Sloane in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
The couple, who had a son, Dashiell, divorced in 2002, and Connery split his time between Los Angeles, where Sara and Dashiell lived, and a cottage in the Borders.
Back in 2005 he talked about the strong relationship he was at pains to build with his son.
‘I take Dash to the cottage every year for Hogmanay or summer holidays. We build campfires, go walking by the river. I just try to show him a very different life,’ he said.
‘When Dash goes to Scotland, he’s got good friends there and rides around on his bike with his pals. The ideas of wealth or fame are not relevant.’
In 2008, Connery turned his hand to directing with his first film, Pandemic. It was panned by the critics but gave him his first foothold behind the camera.
A horror film, The Devil’s Tomb, followed the next year, but went straight to DVD.
He had success in 2016 with Tommy’s Honour, which won him a Scottish Bafta and opened the edinburgh International Film Festival. He apparently held a screening for his father in the Bahamas, where, now 89, he lives with his wife Micheline.
Since then, he has kept a low profile. Until now. With one fell swoop, this week’s announcement of the new film studio makes Connery one of the most powerful figures in the Scottish film industry.
For the 57-year-old it is an extraordinary opportunity not only to change the movie landscape in Scotland, but to finally step out from the shadow of his famous father.