Roger Moore’s 007 always a gentleman
USA TODAY ranks his seven James Bond films
Sir Roger Moore, the suave Brit with the perpetually arched eyebrow who played James Bond in more 007 films than any other actor, died Tuesday at age 89.
The actor, who assumed the secret-agent role from Sean Connery, played Bond in seven films, beginning with 1973’s
Live and Let Die and ending with 1985’s A View to A Kill.
His family announced in a statement that the star died in Switzerland “after a short but brave battle with cancer.”
Roger Moore seemed like more of a lover than a fighter as James Bond, but on his watch, 007 was always a gentleman.
Taking over the role from Sean Connery, Moore, who died Tuesday at age 89, played the consummate British secret agent in seven films in the 1970s and ’80s before handing the keys to the franchise to Timothy Dalton. For the earliest Gen Xers, he was the suavest of Bonds, with a way with the ladies and an air of cool even when presented with hugely dangerous situations.
Here are all seven of Moore’s Bond performances, ranked by USA TODAY’s Brian Truitt.
1 FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981) Who else but Bond is going to get the call when a British ship is sunk and its nuclear missile command system goes missing? The secret agent’s Greek ally Aristotle Kristatos (Julian Glover) is first a pal and later the movie’s primary big bad, trying to sell the important device to the Soviets, and Bond pairs with Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet), a lady out for revenge against her parents’ killer. Serious stuff abounds but it’s got some camp, too, like the best Moore flicks: Bond flirts with an ice-skating prodigy (Lynn-Holly Johnson), then is attacked in the rink by hockey goons and commandeers a Zamboni just in time.
2 THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977) Bond and Jaws didn’t always see eye to eye — especially not when they’re trying to kill each other on a train in one of Moore’s all-time best action scenes. Spy found Bond romancing Russian agent Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) on the pair’s mission to foil anarchist shipping tycoon Karl Stromberg (Curd Jürgens), who has designs on making British and Russian submarines launch nukes that would take out Moscow and New York City.
3 MOONRAKER (1979) Moore went intergalactic as Bond teams with CIA agent Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) after an American space shuttle is hijacked and evil industrialist Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) plots to dispose of mankind and jumpstart his own master race. No one looked as good in a spacesuit as Moore, and Bond teams with old foe Jaws (Richard Kiel) just in time to send Drax to his cosmic doom.
4 THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974) This has a little bit of everything that’s great about Bond flicks: a superweapon powered by the heat of the sun; a notorious supervillain in Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), the world’s most expensive assassin; and a super-attractive Bond girl in Britt Ekland’s bikini-clad Mary Goodnight. Moore and Lee go head to head in a final duel set in a mirror-filled maze climax, with Hervé Villechaize behind the scenes as Scaramanga’s chief assistant.
5 LIVE AND LET DIE (1973) Moore’s first 007 outing also was one that was very much influenced by the blaxploitation genre popular at the time: Bond is on the case when three fellow agents are killed and the Caribbean drug lord Kananga (Yaphet Kotto) needs to be taken down before he enacts his plan to rule the world’s heroin trade. The good news (aside from Paul McCartney’s Wings-era theme song): Moore got a pair of high-profile Bond girls in Gloria Hendry, the first African-American love interest for the hero, and Jane Seymour, as ace tarotcard reader Solitaire.
6 OCTOPUSSY (1983) In the grip of the Cold War, Bond took on Afghan prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) and jewel smuggler Octopussy (Maud Adams) as they hatched a plot to use a nuclear weapon and force Europe into a disarmament scenario, leaving it open for a Soviet invasion. Things get really crazy for Bond under the big top, as he takes on knife-throwing twins, disguises himself as a clown to escape West German police and has to disarm a bomb before it blows up a bunch of young circus lovers.
7 A VIEW TO A KILL (1985) One that’s definitely for the MTV crowd (cue the Duran Duran title tune), the film sent Moore’s 007 out in style by having him battle the superpowerful henchwoman May Day (Grace Jones) and foil the machinations of microchip mogul Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), who schemes to upend Silicon Valley. Bond skis down a mountain in the opening, taking out bad guys before a romantic rendezvous in an underground igloo, but ends in the air, tussling with Zorin on the Golden Gate Bridge.