ROGER MOORE

AS A MAVERICK, A SAINT AND A SECRET AGENT, THE SUAVE STAR ALWAYS CARRIED A LICENSE TO THRILL

Closer pays tribute to the late James Bond actor’s life and film legacy.

He epitomized the cool lady-killer as James Bond, but Roger Moore was often shaken, not stirred, by his early encounters with women. “I was never very confident with girls,” he recalled in 2016. “In my teens, I was very insecure. So I invented Roger Moore.”

Boy, are we glad he did. In TV series like Maverick and The Saint as well as his seven 007 movies, Roger — who died of cancer at 89 on May 23 — seduced audiences with his debonair style. “He was such a gentleman,” Tanya Roberts, who co-starred with Roger in his final Bond film, 1985’s A View to a Kill, tells Closer. “He was one of a kind.”

The son of a policeman dad and a housewife mom, Roger grew up in South London with an inferiority complex. “I was a bit overweight as a child, being passionate about baked beans on toast and Cadbury’s milk chocolate,” he recalled. “I remember my father pulling the belt of my blue schoolboy’s raincoat rather tight and saying, ‘You are like a sack of bloody potatoes, tied up and ugly in the middle.’ The insecurity probably came from that.”

Roger matured into a handsome man, working as a knitwear model before moving to Hollywood to pursue stardom. “I was so pretty, actresses didn’t want to work with me,” he quipped. But he landed plenty of jobs, and after he replaced James Garner as his gambler cousin Beau on Maverick in ’60, he found worldwide fame as dogooding secret agent Simon Templar in TV’s The Saint. “Mia Farrow told me she and Frank Sinatra watched The Saint in bed!” Roger revealed to Closer in 2014.

NOBODY DID IT BETTER

When Sean Connery stepped down as Bond, Roger slid easily into the role, starting with 1973’s Live and Let Die. (Die-hard Bond fans still debate which of the two actors was the best 007.) “I played it slightly tongue-incheek,” he said. Adds Tanya, “The part came naturally to him.” Like 007, Roger had his share of romances, marrying four times and having three children with his third wife, Italian actress Luisa Mattioli. His fourth marriage, to former flight attendant Kristina Tholstrup, lasted from 2002 until his death. “I learned to have the last words, which are, ‘Yes, dear,’ ” he joked to Closer.

Roger felt typecast after playing Bond as “the hero, not blinking with explosions going on around him,” he said. So he dedicated more time to his work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, having been recruited by good friend Audrey Hepburn. “He took the baton from my mother and had a triumphant third act,” Audrey’s son Sean Hepburn Ferrer tells Closer. “He was warm and loving yet always kept that wonderfully dry sense of humor. How can we not smile through the tears when he had such a full life?” — Bruce Fretts, with reporting by

Katie Bruno and Ilyssa Panitz

“It’s all been very nice. I’m very grateful.”

— Roger, reflecting on his life to Closer in 2014

Roger at his 2007 Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony with son Christian, daughter Deborah, wife Kristina and son Geoffrey

“Roger incorporated his dry sense of humor into Bond,” says Tanya, in ’85. He mostly wore his own clothes as spiffy spy Simon Templar on The Saint from 1962 to ’69.

Roger with Maverick cousins Jack Kelly (left) and Robert Colbert

“He was so funny and kind,” says Jane Seymour (in ’73’s Live and Let Die).