CONNERY AT 90
He is THE most famous 007, an Oscar winner and Scotland’s greatest living icon. Now, as he celebrates a landmark birthday, Sir Sean is playing the most important role of his amazing life
I was the only student who would eat lunch with him... he was slightly shy What he does with his money and who he gives it to is up to him
IN his role as superspy James Bond, he roamed the globe in a high-octane whirl of beautiful women, fast cars and deadly gadgets. But, rather more sedately, as he sits in his Caribbean home days before his 90th birthday, Sir Sean Connery is nonetheless playing an ever greater role – that of loving husband, father and grandfather. The Scots star, who has shunned the limelight for more than a decade, will celebrate the milestone surrounded by those closest to him on August 25.
Sir Sean, once one of the world’s most high-profile celebrities, will enjoy an intimate gathering at his family’s gated estate on the island of New Providence, in the Bahamas.
His beloved wife of 45 years, Micheline, will be by his side and his only son, Jason, is expected to jet over from Edinburgh for the first time since lockdown restrictions were imposed.
Saskia Connery, the 24-year-old daughter of Sir Sean’s stepson, Stephane Connery, is also hoping to join the party. The socialite – who calls her grandfather ‘Sean Sean’ and who he lovingly refers to as ‘baby’ – recently wrote: ‘I love you beyond words.
‘You are the most humble, generous, hilarious, intelligent and self-made man I know and I look up to you every day.’
One notable absence will be Sir Sean’s younger brother, Neil Connery. He still lives in Edinburgh, where they were born and brought up, but ill-health means the 82-year-old actor, who bears a striking resemblance to his older sibling, will have to offer his congratulations by phone.
From their home in Corstorphine, Mr Connery’s wife Elinor said: ‘Neil has not been well but he will certainly be in touch on the day to wish his brother a very happy birthday. He wouldn’t miss it.’
Sir Sean’s 90th is a milestone that even the actor himself must have thought he might never reach.
His health has been a topic of intense speculation since he quit acting. He underwent surgery to remove a tumour on his kidney in 2006 but in recent pictures, albeit noticeably thinner than in his 007 days, the elderly actor once voted ‘the sexiest man alive’ appears fit and in good spirits.
In one photograph shared on social media he is seen smiling as his granddaughter kisses him on the cheek. In another he sits, wearing a silk robe, on his balcony giving a thumbs-up, after receiving a bouquet of flowers from US President Donald Trump.
Sir Sean certainly has much to be happy about, joining Clint Eastwood, 90, and Dick Van Dyke, 94, as one of very few male actors of his generation to reach their tenth decade.
His twilight years spent in warm Caribbean climes are a far cry from his humble beginnings in a small Edinburgh tenement flat with no electricity or hot water.
Born Thomas Sean Connery at the Royal Maternity Hospital in Edinburgh on August 25, 1930, his first bed was the drawer at the bottom of his parents’ wardrobe.
His father Joseph was a factory worker and lorry driver, while mother Effie was a cleaner.
By the time he was ten, the young ‘Tam Connery’ was delivering milk before school to help supplement his family’s modest income.
At Bruntsfield Primary School and Darroch Secondary in the city, he was said to be well-liked but to ‘take no nonsense’. There was nothing to mark him out as exceptional apart from his skill with a football and his good looks.
During the Second World War, his school building was taken over for military use and classes dispersed.
One of his classes was relocated to a private house in the affluent area of Morningside, where the lady of the house is said to have recognised him as the milkboy and refused to let him over the doorstep. It was a lesson in snobbery that stuck with Sir Sean all his life and led to a number of high-profile spats.
In his book, Being a Scot, published in 2008 on his 78th birthday, the star recounted that he ‘got away with’ leaving school at 13 because it was wartime, and went to work for St Cuthbert’s Co-operative dairy.
His round included Fettes College, alma mater of Ian Fleming’s James Bond – although, at that time, he had no way of knowing that his big-screen depiction of the fictional spy would make him richer than any of the parents who sent their offspring to Scotland’s most expensive fee-paying school.
When he found fame, Sir Sean’s determination not to suffer fools gladly continued, and he was said to be suspicious of anyone he thought might be out to take advantage of him. He sued a succession of film companies and individuals he considered owed him money – and once joked that Paramount was the only studio he had not sued.
However, in his book he admits to having a sensitive side and reveals he lavished attention on his horse, Tich, buying rosettes and decorative chains for the animal.
In his late teens, he enlisted in the Royal Navy for a 12-year stint – an experience he would later draw upon in film. To fit in with his fellow seamen, he got tattoos on his forearm, ‘Mum & Dad’ and ‘Scotland Forever’, which had to be painstakingly edited out of his films.
He has admitted that if his career as a sailor had been a success, he would never have become an actor.
But he struggled with the strict class structure within the Navy and was eventually invalided out with stomach ulcers and given a disability pension, which he cashed in for a motorbike. Back in Edinburgh, he drifted through a succession of jobs – including as a lifeguard and coffin-polisher – and made his stage debut in 1952 in a walk-on part in a play called The Glorious Days at the Empire, now the Edinburgh Festival Theatre. He was given the role of a guardsman because of his 6ft 2in stature.
To make some extra cash he was a life model at Edinburgh College of Art. Artist Ricky Demarco, who was a student at the time, recalled in a recent documentary: ‘I was the only student who would eat lunch with him because there is a strict class difference between the students and the models. He was very straight, slightly shy.’
As well as playing football, Sir Sean took up bodybuilding and entered the Mr Universe competition, though contrary to many reports he did not win any awards.
He heard about auditions for South Pacific and found himself back in naval uniform as part of the chorus line, belting out There is Nothing Like a Dame.
He was offered a trial with Manchester United but Robert Henderson, an older actor who became his mentor, persuaded him he might have a future as an actor if he kept at it, and that an acting career might last longer – if everything went right.
The young Scot spent his time reading novels, plays and books about acting in an attempt to compete with his classically trained rivals and bought a tape recorder to
work on his strong accent – which would become one of his most distinguishing features.
He was in his early thirties and had been plying his trade as an actor for a decade when Dr No, the first of the Bond films, made him an ‘overnight sensation’ and a international sex symbol in 1962.
The opening scene, which showed him in a dinner suit at a casino table, is arguably one of the most recognisable movie stills of all time.
Two months after the release of Dr No, Sir Sean married the Oscarnominated Australian actress Diane Cilento, whom he had met through theatre work, and they had a son together, Jason.
For a while they were cinema’s golden couple – but behind the scenes it was a difficult relationship and the pair in divorced in 1973 amid claims of mental and physical domestic violence, which Sir Sean denied.
It was later rumoured he had cut off his son from his £85 million fortune to ensure he learned the value of earning his own money.
But Connery Jr, an actor and director, said in 2008: ‘He and I have never had that conversation. That is simply a lie.’ The 57-year-old added: ‘He has earned this money through nothing but his tireless hard work and what he does with it and who he gives it to is completely up to him.’
Sir Sean famously demanded, and got, $1 million to return as Bond in Diamonds are Forever in 1970.
He used the fee to set up the Scottish International Education Trust and recruited his old friend Ricky
Demarco as its director. He met his current wife, French artist Micheline Roquebrune, at a golf tournament in Morocco in 1975.
Ms Roquebrune, one year his senior, had been married twice before and had three children, Oliver, Micha and Stephane.
She said she and Sir Sean had ‘instant chemistry’ and that ‘no man has ever had that effect on me’.
They have shared several houses, including one in London, but their main homes were in Marbella and subsequently the Bahamas, which was to prove controversial when Sir Sean became an outspoken supporter of Scottish independence, despite not being able to vote.
Ahead of the 2014 referendum, the rampant nationalist said he believed ‘a new sense of opportunity and hope for the future was in sight’ as he urged Scots to vote ‘yes’.
Sir Sean said: ‘As a Scot with a lifelong love of Scotland and the arts, I believe the opportunity of independence is too good to miss. Simply put, there is no more creative an act than creating a new nation.
‘A Yes vote will capture the world’s attention, giving us an unparalleled opportunity to promote our heritage and creative excellence.’
He was a well-known donor to the SNP until 2001, when the UK Parliament passed legislation that prohibited overseas funding for British political activities.
His staunch political beliefs are said to have prevented him from receiving a knighthood until 2000, when he was 70.
Sir Sean was so successful as 007 that it looked for a long time as if he might be typecast and never emerge
A Yes vote [for independence] will capture the world’s attention
from the secret agent’s shadow. But he went on to become one of cinema’s biggest stars in the 1980s and the 1990s.
He won an Oscar for 1987’s The Untouchables, which he starred in alongside Kevin Costner and Robert De Niro.
Steven Spielberg famously said that the Scot was one of only seven ‘genuine film stars’ in the world and cast him as Indiana Jones’s father in his epic adventure Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which was released in 1989.
Sir Sean then appeared in dozens more movies with some of cinema’s
Industry retired him because he didn’t want to play small parts about old men
biggest stars, including Family Business in 1989 with Dustin Hoffman, The Russia House with Michelle Pfeiffer in 1990, First Knight – starring as King Arthur – alongside Richard Gere in 1995, The Rock in 1996 with Nicolas Cage and 1999’s Entrapment, with Catherine Zeta Jones.
In his sixties Sir Sean was voted the sexiest man alive in an American poll, which prompted him to point out that ‘there are few sexy dead ones’.
And he was still one of the highest-paid actors in the world. In 2003, at the age of 73, he appeared in his final major film, a bigscreen adaptation of comic book The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, before retiring to concentrate on his other passion, playing golf.
Afterwards, Sir Sean’s close friend, the actor Sir Michael Caine, said: ‘The movie business retired him because he didn’t want to play small parts about old men and they weren’t offering him any young parts in romantic leads.’
Another of the Scot’s good friends, racing driver Sir Jackie Stewart, said: ‘He had that great skill of knowing when to stop and he’s never gone back. He just doesn’t want to do it any more.
‘All of us grow old but Sean is still for me the utter James Bond to the finest degree. I’m sure Fleming would have been well pleased with him. He’s been Scotland’s greatest superstar. I cannot think of anyone who has been bigger.’
Despite shunning public life, Sir Sean made headlines in 2012 when he and close friend Sir Alex Ferguson gate-crashed Sir Andy Murray’s US Open press conference.
The pair, who had been watching Sir Andy win his semi-final match, invaded the stage to congratulate their fellow Scot and Sir Sean proclaimed ‘Today they [Scotland] conquered the world!’.
Once a keen traveller, it is not known if he will ever leave the Caribbean for a final visit to his homeland.
Yet as he sits and watches the sun set on his 89th year from an armchair on his expansive balcony, the former milk boy who became one of the world’s most successful movie stars can take comfort in the fact that he will never be forgotten.