Roger Moore, made famous by Bond films, dies at 89
Roger Moore, the suave British actor who starred in seven James Bond movies and brought a likable, comedic dimension to the unflappable secret agent, has died after a short battle with cancer, his family said Tuesday. He was 89.
From 1973 to 1985, Moore was Agent 007 in “Live and Let Die,” “The Man with the Golden Gun,” “The Spy Who Loved Me,” “Moonraker,” “For Your Eyes Only,” “Octopussy” and “A View to a Kill.”
He was often compared with Sean Connery, the Scottish actor who originated the film role and in many ways was the prototypical Bond.
“I’m often asked, ‘Who is the best Bond?” Moore wrote in his 2012 book, “Bond on Bond.”
“Apart from myself ?” I modestly enquire. “It has to be Sean.”
“Sean was Bond. He created Bond,” Moore wrote. “He was a bloody good 007.”
From 1962 to 1969, Moore starred on TV’s “The Saint” as the rakish Simon Templar, a modern-day Robin Hood who targeted wealthy villains. In his later years, he was a globetrotting goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, a job he embraced after his friend Audrey Hepburn cajoled him into it. In 2003, he was knighted for his charity efforts.
But he was best known as Bond, James Bond — the dashing British spy who, in Moore’s hands, never met a woman or a pun he could resist.
In private, he had distinctly un-Bondlike qualities.
He was a hypochondriac. He feared heights and loathed guns, perhaps because a friend accidentally shot him in the leg with an air rifle when he was 15. And he didn’t care for vodka martinis, Bond’s trademark cocktail; Moore said that if he had just 24 hours left to live, he would order a dry Tanqueray gin martini, with three olives on the side.
In contrast to Connery’s dark, roughhewn good looks, Moore was fair.
“I was fortunately always offered jobs because I was so pretty,” he told the London Evening Standard in 2003. “Women used to complain about it!”
Moore was one of seven big-screen Bonds. The others were Connery, who originated the role on film, followed by George Lazenby, Pierce Brosnan, Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig. David Niven was Bond in “Casino Royale,” a 1967 spoof that was not part of Eon Productions’ “official” Bond franchise.
At 58, when Moore announced that he would finally hang up his Walther PPK, he was the oldest of all the Bonds.