Self-deprecating star who was forever James Bond

“He rated himself as the fourth-best Bond, and when asked what he’d brought to the role, he replied: ‘White teeth’”

Roger Moore 1927-2017

Roger Moore, who died last week aged 89, was not everyone’s favourite James Bond, and was by his own estimation only the fourth-best 007 – but he was, more than perhaps anyone, responsible for survival of the franchise. Sean Connery had defined the role, and the first attempt to replace him, with George Lazenby, had turned out badly. By the time Moore took over, for Live and Let Die in 1973, there were doubts as to whether the films would be kept going. But Moore – tall, debonair and handsome, with a smug smile, a twinkle in his eye and an arched eyebrow – created a more light-hearted, self-aware Bond that suited the silly, jet-set 1970s: he lasted 12 years in the role, longer than any other actor, and made seven films, ending with A View to a Kill in 1985, by which time he was 58.

Flinty and tough, Connery’s Bond – like Daniel Craig’s – was admired but feared; the Roger Moore Bond was loved, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. “And Sir Roger Moore was loved too.” Elegant and charming, he admitted to being an egomaniac, but he had no self-importance: asked once what he thought he’d brought to the role of Bond, he replied: “White teeth.” His success, he said, had been “99% luck” – and he was grateful for it. “Being eternally known as Bond has no downside,” he once said. “People often call me ‘Mr Bond’ when we’re out and I don’t mind a bit. Why would I?”

Born in Stockwell, south London, in 1927, Moore was the son of a police constable. But though it was honed at Rada, his drawling, patrician-meets-mid-atlantic baritone was his own: he recalled that when he was a child, his mother, Lily, would tick him off if he dropped his aitches, while his father, George, a keen amateur actor who’d adopted a stage accent, “sounded very posh indeed”. An only child, he won a scholarship to Battersea Grammar, but he didn’t thrive and, at 15, dropped out to work in an animation studio. When he was sacked from that job, he tagged along with a friend who was working as an extra at Denham Studios. The once podgy child had by then grown into a 6ft 2in hunk, said The Independent, and after three days playing a sword carrier on the 1945 film Caesar and Cleopatra, he was spotted by its assistant director Brian Hurst, who helped him get into Rada and paid his fees. He stayed for three terms, then went to work in rep in Cambridge, where his fellow thesps nicknamed him The Duchess, on account of his fastidiousness and deportment. When he joined the army for his national service, he was, rather to his surprise, sent to officer training school and commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps as a second lieutenant. “I think it was mainly because I looked the part,” he observed.

In 1946, aged 19, he married a figure skater named Doorn van Steyn (born Lucy Woodard). They moved into a bedsit in Streatham; money was tight, and he struggled to find acting work. To make ends meet, he began modelling, advertising Brylcreem and toothpaste but mainly jumpers (hence his nickname The Big Knit). Never able to take himself entirely seriously, he learned, while modelling, to strike a pose and a faintly ironic expression. His marriage was volatile (he claimed his wife punched and scratched him, and once threw a teapot at his head), and in 1952, aged 24, he met the Welsh singer Dorothy Squires at one of her wild parties, and began an affair that would lead to his divorce and remarriage, said The Daily Telegraph. Squires, 13 years his senior, was determined to make him a star, and took him to America to try his luck there. But he was not faithful, and the marriage deteriorated: there were ugly public scenes, and he claimed she once hit him over the head with a guitar. On the set of Romulus and the Sabines (1961), he met the Italian actress Luisa Mattioli. Though she couldn’t speak English, they began an affair, and married in 1969 (Squires having refused to divorce him for years). Moore and Mattioli moved to Switzerland and had three children, but that marriage was also volatile; it ended in 1996. He was married finally to Kristina Tholstrup. He described their relationship as “wonderfully tranquil”.

Moore won his first big TV role in 1958, in Ivanhoe, but it was not until he played Simon Templar in The Saint that he achieved bona fide stardom, said Ryan Gilbey in The Observer. The show ran for seven years until 1969, and was a precursor to his turn as 007 – “even his habit of looking directly at the camera prefigures” his later Bond films, in which “he all but winks at the audience”. He was then cast in the The Persuaders!, playing an English toff who teams up with a streetwise self-made American millionaire (Tony Curtis) to solve crime. By the time he became Bond, he was 45. His first outing, Live and Let Die, had bizarre blaxploitation elements, and saw 007 escaping across a river using crocodiles as stepping stones. His best was arguably The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), which features one of the most enthralling of all the Bond opening sequences: 007 being chased on skis down a mountain, soaring off a cliff, and plunging hundreds of feet before opening a Union Flag parachute as the Bond theme tune kicks in.

Moore was a keen skier – but he hated guns and loud noises, and claimed that every time he had to fire Bond’s weapon, he blinked. He was not, he said, a natural cold-blooded killer, so he mined the part for its humour. “The Bond situations are so ridiculous,” he said. “I mean, this man is supposed to be a spy and yet everybody knows he’s a spy. Every bartender in the world offers him martinis that are shaken, not stirred. What kind of serious spy is recognised everywhere he goes?” Pre-empting criticism of his acting abilities, he liked to say that he had three expressions as Bond: “right eyebrow raised, left eyebrow raised, and eyebrows crossed when grabbed by Jaws”. But he could do more than that, as he proved in some of his non-bond outings, notably The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970).

After stepping down as Bond, he more or less gave up acting, and dedicated himself to humanitarian work as an unpaid Unicef goodwill ambassador. He was also a keen defender of animal rights. He was knighted in 2003. “I was such a coward that I shut my eyes when the sword was being waved at me, and afterwards I was worried about how I was going to get up,” he joked. But he was proud of the honour. “The knighthood for my humanitarian work meant more than if it had been for my acting,” he told The Guardian. “I’m sure some people would say, “What does an actor know about world issues?” But [working for Unicef] I’ve become an expert on things from the causes of dwarfism to the benefits of breastfeeding. I feel very privileged.”