Scottish actor embodied James Bond, became knight
Sean Connery, the irascible Scot from the slums of Edinburgh who found international fame as Hollywood’s original James Bond, dismayed his fans by walking away from the Bond franchise and went on to have a long and fruitful career as a respected actor and an always bankable star, died Saturday in Nassau, the Bahamas. He was 90.
His death was confirmed by Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, on Twitter. “Our nation today mourns one of her best loved sons,” she wrote.
“Bond, James Bond” was the character’s familiar self-introduction, and to legions of fans who have watched a parade of actors play Agent 007, none uttered the words or played the part as magnetically or as indelibly as Connery.
He embodied the novelist Ian Fleming’s suave and resourceful secret agent in the first five Bond films and seven overall, vanquishing diabolical villains and voluptuous women alike beginning with “Dr. No” in 1962.
As a more violent, moody and dangerous man than the James Bond in Fleming’s books, Connery was the top box-office star in both Britain and the United States in 1965 after the success of 1963’s “From Russia With Love,” “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball.”
After he grew tired of the role, Connery would be lured back for one more Bond movie, “Diamonds Are Forever,” only by the offer of $1 million as an advance against 12% of the movie’s gross revenues.
Connery would revisit the character one more time a decade later, in 1983’s elegiac “Never Say Never Again.” But he had made clear long before then that he was not going to let himself be typecast.
Connery won a best-actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for 1986’s “The Nameof the Rose,” in which he played a crime-solving medieval monk, and the Academy Award as best supporting
actor for his performance as an honest cop on the corrupt Chicago police force in 1987’s “The Untouchables.”
He was born Thomas Sean Connery on Aug. 25, 1930. At the age of 9, Thomas found an early-morning job delivering milk in a horse cart for four hours before he went to school. At 13, Thomas Connery became a full-time milkman. Britain had been at war for four years. Three years later, with the soldiers coming home and work scarcer, he joined the Royal Navy.
He signed up for 12 years, but was discharged at 19 after acquiring an ulcer. He had also acquired two tattoos on his right arm — “Mum and Dad” and “Scotland Forever” — and a small
disability grant, which he used to learn furniture polishing. Bodybuilding led indirectly to a touring production of the musical “South Pacific.” He was chosen for the chorus because he looked like a sailor.
“I spent my ‘South Pacific’ tour in every library in Britain, Ireland, Scotland and Wales,” Connery told The Houston Chronicle in 1992. “And on the nights we were dark, I’d see every play I could. But it’s the books, the reading, that can change one’s life. I’m the living evidence.”
In addition to his wife and his son Jason, his survivors include a stepson, Stephane, and his brother.
On July 5, 2000, wearing the
dark green MacLeod tartan of the Highlands, Connery was knighted at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh by Queen Elizabeth II. It was a knighthood that had been vetoed for two years by officials angry at his outspoken support for the Scottish National Party.
The palace is less than 1 mile from the tenement in Fountainbridge where Connery grew up. He never removed the “Scotland Forever” tattoo that he placed on his arm when he was 18. Nor was he ever tempted to deny his identity or turn himself into an English gentleman. As he told The Times in 1987, “My strength as an actor, I think, is that I’ve stayed close to the core of myself.”