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Sir Thomas Sean Connery is a Scottish actor and producer. His popularity as the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film led to a successful decades-long film career.
Background
Thomas Sean Connery was born in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, Scotland on 25 August 1930. His mother, Euphemia McBain "Effie" (née McLean), was a cleaning woman, and his father, Joseph Connery, was a factory worker and lorry driver. He has a younger brother, Neil.
Sean's parents were poor and lived in a neighborhood filled with the smell of rubber mills and breweries. As an infant, he used to sleep in a bureau drawer because his parents could not afford a crib for him. He grew up on the streets playing football with the neighborhood boys. In his early years, he was dubbed as the 'Big Tam' because of his muscular built and ability to pound his friends.
Education
Sean received his early education at Tollcross Elementary School. He was good at mathematics and also had a keen interest in reading. He used to go fishing with his brother and skipped school for amusing extracurricular activities.
At the age of 13, he quit school to earn money for his family.
Sean Connery joined the Royal Navy but was discharged after some time on medical grounds due to his stomach ulcers. Returning to Edinburgh, Connery began to lift weights and develop his physique. He became a lifeguard and even modeled for an art college. Then in 1953, the toned Connery traveled to London to compete in the Mr. Universe competition. This trip was to mean more to him than the third place prize he won. While he was there, he heard about auditions for the musical South Pacific. He decided he wanted to try out, took a crash course in dancing and singing, and was cast for a role in the chorus.
This small part became a crucial turning point for Connery. At the time, he was teetering between wanting to be an actor and a professional soccer player. But actor Robert Henderson, who was also in South Pacific, encouraged him to consider a career in acting. Connery took Henderson's advice: as a soccer player, one is limited by age; a good actor could play challenging roles forever.
The unschooled Connery looked up to Henderson as a mentor. It is also where he picked up his stage name, Sean Connery. When asked how he wanted to be billed for the musical, he gave his full name, Thomas Sean Connery. After being told that was too long, he opted for Sean Connery, not knowing how long he was going to be an actor. The name stuck.
After South Pacific, Connery began broadening his horizons by working on the stage. He was also notable in his first television role, a British production of Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight. After garnering critical acclaim for this role, he received several film offers. In the years from 1955 to 1962, he made a string of B movies, including Action of the Tiger (1957). It was there he met Terence Young, who was to be the director of the Bond films.
Connery was still doing B movies when he was called in to interview for Dr. No, the first James Bond film. But he had matured quite a bit as an actor and exuded a kind of crude animal force, which Young compared to a young Kirk Douglas or Burt Lancaster. Producer Harry Saltzman felt that he had the masculinity the part required. In the course of a conversation he punctuated his words with physical movement. Everyone there agreed he was perfect for the role. Connery was signed without a screen test.
Dr. No was an instant success, propelling the little known Connery into fame and sex-symbol status virtually overnight, a situation that the serious-minded and very private Connery did not like. Equally distressing to him was the way the media handled his transition into the role. Connery also performed many of his own stunts in Dr. No. He has continued this practice in many of his movies because it often speeds up the production. One of the stunts in Dr. No almost killed him. They had rehearsed a scene where he drives his convertible under a crane. At a slow speed, his head cleared by a few inches. When they actually shot the scene, the car was going 50 m.p.h., bouncing up and down. Luckily for Connery, the car hit the last bounce before he went under the crane and he emerged unhurt.
Between 1962 and 1967, Connery made five James Bond movies - Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger (which was, at that time, the fastest money-maker in movie history, netting more than $10 million in its first few months), Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice. He was tiring of the grueling pace of producing a new feature every year, and of the constant publicity and invasion of privacy. During the filming of Thunderball Connery was working long days and doing press interviews at night.
He was also arguing with the Bond movies' producer, Albert (Cubby) Broccoli, because he wanted to slow the pace of the series-completing a feature every 18 months instead of each year. He threatened to cut out of the contract after completing You Only Live Twice, and agreed to accept a salary that was lower than normal.
But the nation was Bond-crazy and the films were a gold mine. Connery agreed to star in Diamonds Are Forever in 1971, demanding a salary of $1.25 million, plus a percentage. At that time, it was an unprecedented sum of money for such a role. After completing the film, Connery said "never again" to Bond roles and donated all of his salary to the Scottish International Education Trust, an organization he'd founded to assist young Scots in obtaining an education. This is not the only example of Connery's generosity to charities. In 1987, he donated 50,000 British pounds to the National Youth Theatre in England after reading an article on the failing institution.
After his split with Broccoli, he continued to pursue a variety of movie roles with his main concern being that he finds them interesting. He would also do films if he felt his help was needed. He reportedly offered to be in Time Bandits for a very modest salary because he heard the producer was running into financial difficulties. With a few exceptions, however, most of the films Connery did in the decade following Diamonds Are Forever were not noteworthy.
Then, in the early 1980s, a strange thing happened. At the age of fifty-three, Connery was asked to reprise the role he had made famous, in Never Say Never Again. The movie rights to this film had been won in a long court battle by Kevin McClory, an enterprising Irishman whom Connery admired a great deal for being able to beat the system. The movie was also scheduled to go head-to-head with Octopussy, a Broccoli Bond epic featuring the new 007, Roger Moore. It seems that twist was too much to resist, and Connery signed up. Connery drew rave reviews as an aging Bond trying to get back in shape for a daring mission.
In the years since, his performances seem to be getting better and better. In The Untouchables, Connery took the supporting role of Malone, a world-weary, but savvy, street cop. Connery was also very strong in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where he played the scholarly father of the ever-adventurous Jones, entangling himself in a lot of adventure and intrigue. Similarly, in his other recent roles - a monk in The Name of the Rose (1986), a deranged Russian submarine commander in The Hunt for Red October (1990), the knowledgeable police detective in Rising Sun (1993), an aging attorney in Just Cause (1995), King Arthur in First Knight (1995) - Connery continues to prove his versatility and maturity as an actor. Even as he passed age 65, Connery showed he can hold his own against Hollywood's hottest upstarts with his role as the ex-con who had once escaped from Alcatraz in the 1996 action thriller The Rock, co-starring Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris. Connery’s memorable films of the 1990s include Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), First Knight (1995), The Rock (1996), Dragonheart (1996), and Entrapment (1999).
Connery officially retired from acting following his appearance in the film adaptation (2003) of the comic-book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, though he went on to perform various voice roles.
Academy Award-winning Scottish actor Sean Connery is best known for playing 007 in the early 'James Bond' spy movies.
Sean won two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award).
In 1999, Connery received a Kennedy Center Honor for Lifetime Achievement and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in July 2000. In 2006, he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award.
Connery has been polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine, and in 1999, he was voted "Sexiest Man of the Century".
Sean's father was a Roman Catholic, and his mother was a Protestant. Connery was raised a Catholic. Religion, faith, and spirituality aren’t topics Connery has discussed in any depth.
Politics
Connery is a member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), a centre-left political party campaigning for Scottish independence from the United Kingdom, and has supported the party financially and through personal appearances. His funding of the SNP ceased in 2001, when the UK Parliament passed legislation that prohibited overseas funding of political activities in the UK.
Views
Quotations:
"There is nothing like a challenge to bring out the best in man."
"I like women. I don't understand them, but I like them."
"Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith. For without fear of the devil there is no need for God."
"I have always hated that damn James Bond. I'd like to kill him."
"There are women who take it to the wire. That's what they are looking for, the ultimate confrontation. They want a smack."
Personality
Connery began bodybuilding at the age of 18, and from 1951 trained heavily with Ellington, a former gym instructor in the British army. While his official website claims he was third in the 1950 Mr. Universe contest, most sources place him in the 1953 competition, either third in the Junior class or failing to place in the Tall Man classification. Connery stated that he was soon deterred from bodybuilding when he found that the Americans frequently beat him in competitions because of sheer muscle size and, unlike Connery, refused to participate in athletic activity which could make them lose muscle mass.
Connery was a keen footballer, having played for Bonnyrigg Rose in his younger days. He was offered a trial with East Fife. While on tour with South Pacific, Connery played in a football match against a local team that Matt Busby, manager of Manchester United, happened to be scouting. According to reports, Busby was impressed with his physical prowess and offered Connery a contract worth £25 a week immediately after the game. Connery admits that he was tempted to accept, but he recalls, "I realised that a top-class footballer could be over the hill by the age of 30, and I was already 23. I decided to become an actor and it turned out to be one of my more intelligent moves."
A keen golfer, Connery owned the Domaine de Terre Blanche in the South of France for twenty years (from 1979) where he planned to build his dream golf course on the 266 acres (108 ha) of land, but the dream was not realised until he sold it to German billionaire Dietmar Hopp in 1999.
Sean has been awarded the rank of Shodan (1st dan) in Kyokushin karate.
Interests
Sport & Clubs
bodybuilding, football, football club Rangers F.C., golf, karate
Connections
During the production of South Pacific in the mid-1950s, Connery dated a "dark-haired beauty with a ballerina's figure", Carol Sopel, but was warned off by her Jewish family. He then dated Julie Hamilton, a blonde woman, daughter of a documentary filmmaker and feminist Jill Craigie. Given Connery's rugged appearance and rough charm, Hamilton initially thought he was a most appalling person and was not attracted to him until she saw him in a kilt, declaring him to be the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen in her life. He also shared a mutual attraction with black jazz singer Maxine Daniels, whom he met at the Empire Theatre. He made a pass at her, but she informed him that she was already happily married with a baby daughter.
Connery was married to actress Diane Cilento from 1962 to 1973. The marriage produced a son, actor Jason Connery. Connery has been married to Moroccan-French painter Micheline Roquebrune (born 1929) since 1975.
Father:
Joseph Connery
Mother:
Euphemia McBain
Spouse:
Micheline Roquebrune
(b.1929)
Brother:
Neil Connery
(born 1 January 1938)
Neil Niren Connery is a retired Scottish actor and the younger brother of actor Sir Sean Connery.
ex-spouse:
Diane Cilento
(5 October 1933 – 6 October 2011)
Diane Cilento was an Australian actress and author. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1963 film Tom Jones.
Son:
Jason Joseph Connery
(born 11 January 1963)
Jason Joseph Connery is an English actor and director.
Michael Caine is an English actor, producer, and author.
References
Sean Connery: A Biography
A biography of a star and an investigation of what can happen to a man, when the images he creates take over his life.
2011
Sean Connery
An intimate and revealing biography of one of the world's greatest stars.
1983
Being a Scot
Although he is an international superstar, Sean Connery still knows the city of Edinburgh practically street by street from delivering the morning milk as a schoolboy. In this vivid and highly personal portrait of Scotland and its achievements, Connery shines a light upon both his own upbringing and the successes and failures of Scotland's history.
2008
Sean Connery: Neither Shaken nor Stirred
From humble beginnings as a milkman and coffin-polisher to one of the world's biggest box-office names, Sean Connery is one of Hollywood's all-time greatest success stories. The star of nearly 80 films, Connery is perhaps still best known for his seven performances as James Bond. This definitive biography reveals Connery's early successes and failures - both personal and professional - and looks at the little-known life behind the cameras. Frank and thorough, this is a complete look at the film world's classic charismatic hard man.
1992
Sean Connery: A Biography
Bob McCabe brilliantly captures the life and times of this talented and much respected actor in the book "Sean Connery: A Biography".
Sean Connery: From 007 to Hollywood Icon
This work traces Connery's move from the slums of Scotland to the silver screen, where his determination to avoid typecasting has extended his career and qualified him as one of the great movie stars.
