31.10.2020
08:08
The British actor was 90 years old. He was the popular spy in seven films and won numerous awards during his long career, including an Oscar, three Golden Globes, and two Baftas.
October 31, 2020 Share on FacebookShare Share on TwitterTweet Share on WhatsAppShare
Sean Connery
Legendary British actor Sean Connery died at the age of 90, his family reported Saturday.
The life of what was considered “the best James Bond of all time” began in a humble neighborhood of Edinburgh. Thomas Sean Connery was the first-born son of Joseph, sometimes a laborer, sometimes a truck driver, and always a Catholic, and Effie , a Protestant janitor.
At age 20, unemployed but with strong arms, a friend recommended him as a stagehand at the King’s Theater. Behind the scenes, she discovered that this world was her world. So when two years later he was offered to work as an extra in the play Sixty Glorious Years, he said “yes.” So he left the Tommy to become Sean Connery . As Sean, he appeared as part of the choir in the musical Al Sur del Pacífico . At 27, his first big opportunity came. BBC director Alvin Rakof was looking for the male lead of Requiem for a middleweight, when an actress suggested hiring him because “women will like him.”
His name and his indisputable look began to be known. He worked on Terence Young’s Frontier of Love and Mists of Restlessness with Lana Turner . While his film appearances alternated with performances on English television and plays, novels written by Ian Fleming and starring an English secret agent named Bond… James Bond were all the rage in bookstores.
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The 007 character was so attractive that two producers came up with bringing him to the big screen. Finding the right actor was not an easy task. He had to be able to look sophisticated, dress impeccably, seduce every girl he came across, and kill villains with the same distinction that he drank a Dry Martini.
Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, the producers thought of Cary Grant but a million reasons – dollars in this case – made them abandon the idea. They shuffled another 200 names, including Richard Burton, James Mason, and Peter Finch; and, unconvinced, they summoned Connery . The day that from the window of his office, they saw him arrive “walking like a panther”, the role was his without the need for a camera test . Of course, they had to spend several weeks teaching him to behave, walk, speak and even eat like an English gentleman and not like a Scottish warrior.
Connery opened the James Bond series with 007 against Dr. No in 1962 alongside Ursula Andress . Fleming, who at first did not love him because of his accent, was so amazed that he introduced a father from Scotland in recognition of the saga. The Scottish actor played the British spy seven times before being replaced by Roger Moore .
Like the English spy, the actor showed how to be effortless magnetic and seductive . His character made him a reference in fashion. Bond / Connery proved that a well-worn suit can be a deadly weapon … of seduction.
With Bond, Connery’s sex symbol category reached stratospheric level. It is those beings blessed by genetics , that without resorting to surgeries or adopting a “stupid” style, time does not make them worse but improves them. He was one of the best dressed men in the world and the king of masculinity in the 1960s.
With more than sixty titles behind him, the Scotsman starred in six about the most famous secret agent in cinema: “Agent 007 against Dr. No” (1962), “From Russia with love” (1963), “James Bond against Goldfinger “(1964),” Operation Thunder “(1965),” 007: You only live twice “(1967) and” Diamonds for eternity “(1971).
In this latest film, Connery once again took on the role of agent 007 after a film impasse in which George Lazenby took over , and with it he broke a Guinness record: being the highest paid actor for a single film .
The Scotsman pocketed what would now be about $ 40 million or about € 35.2 million , a sum he donated entirely to his foundation, Scottish International Educational Trust, which supports the education of children with few resources.
Although Bond brought him fame and success, it also brought some typecasting. This led him to detest his character , so much so that he claimed that if he could he would kill him. Obsessed with giving his career a new direction, he worked on Robin and Marian with Audrey Hepburn, and, alongside Michael Caine, on The Man Who Could Reign , an adaptation of a Kipling short novel.
Alfred Hitchcok summoned him to film Marnie and even allowed him to read the script first, something never seen before . Tippi Hedren, her co-star, asked how she would interpret her role as an icy woman in the face of such a “hottie.” He replied, “It’s called acting, my dear.”
His career continued unstoppable until in 1987 his role in “The Untouchables” earned him the Oscar for best supporting actor, which was joined by two Baftas and three Golden Globes.
He also participated in titles such as “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974), “The Name of the Rose” (1986), “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989) and “The Avengers” (1998). Remarkably, in 2012, he voiced the protagonist of the animated film “Sir Billi”.
The interpreter has always publicly shown his social and financial support to the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) , defender of Scottish independence, and when he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000, he came dressed in the traditional Scottish kilt.
In the private sphere, he married twice, first with the Australian actress Diane Cilento , with whom he had his only son, Jason , and from whom he divorced in 1973, after which he married what would be his last partner, French artist Micheline Roquebrune .
In 1999, after Connery sold his estate in Marbella, he and Roquebrune were investigated on suspicion of having defrauded the Spanish Treasury about 5.5 million pounds (6.1 million euros), a case in which the The interpreter, unlike his wife, was not prosecuted.
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