Remembering Sean Connery

Sir Sean Connery was born on August 25^th, 1930 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Connery was raised in the household of a middle class. He continued to practice bodybuilding after a three-year span in the Royal Navy and a variety of odd jobs and became a model for student artists and men’s fashion catalogs. He competed in the race for Mr. Universe in 1953, which led to jobs as an extra in stage productions in turn. He played a minor role in the South Pacific musical Rodgers and Hammerstein’s tour production in 1954 and eventually took on the leading role. More stage and television work followed, including a much-praised role in the BBC television production of Rod Serling’s Heavyweight Requiem in 1957, as a washed-up boxer, Mountain Rivera. In Lilacs in Spring (1954; U.S. title Let’s Make Up), Connery made his film debut and received top billing in the comedy On the Fiddle (1961, also released as Operation Snafu) for the first time. The Disney fantasy Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959) and the World War II epic The Longest Day (1962) were among his other notable films of the time.

Connery played the character of James Bond, Agent 007 of the British Secret Intelligence Service, in the 1962 film version of the spy thriller by Ian Fleming, Dr. No. From Russia with Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964), the film’s immense success and its subsequent aftermath, established James Bond films as a worldwide sensation and Connery as an international celebrity. Connery tended to perform other roles especially in the psychological thriller of Alfred Hitchcock, Marnie (1964), without having to be typified as a super spy. Connery renounced the role of Bond after completing the next two James Bond films, Thunderball (1965) and You Only Live Twice (1967). But he was persuaded four years later to return to the role of Diamonds Are Forever (1971), which he declared as his last film, Bond.

He worked mostly in period dramas and science fiction movies during the 1970s, the best of which were The Molly Maguires (1970), Zardoz (1974), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), The Wind and the Dragon (1975), Robin and Marian (1976), and The First Great Train Robbery (1978). In 1981, in Terry Gilliam’s Time-Travel Adventure Time Robbers, he made a memorable cameo as King Agamemnon, and two years later he thrilled Bond lovers by returning to the sneaky Never Say Never Again (1983) segment of 007.

Two films in the mid-1980s resurrected him as a major star. In Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1986) film adaptation, he won the British Academy Film Award for his role of a monk turned detective, followed by the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as a veteran Chicago cop looking for Al Capone in The Untouchables (1987). Connery was the father of the title character in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Final Crusade (1989), and he played the flawed Soviet submarine commander in The Hunt for Red October (1990). Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), First Knight (1995), The Rock (1996), Dragonheart (1996) and Entrapment (1999) were among Connery’s memorable films of the 1990s. After starring in the film adaptation (2003) of the comic-book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Connery officially retired from acting, though he continued to perform various voice roles.

On October 31st, 2020, at age 90, Sean Connery had died in his sleep at his home in Nassau, Bahamas. His wife, Micheline Roquebrune, had announce that he had died “peacefully” in his sleep and claimed that he was surrounded by family relatives when he had passed. Many people were devastated by his passing such as friends, families, and fans around the world, but they will never forget how great of an actor he was. They will always remember him as the original James Bond 007 and how he made an impact of having such great talent to help launch the most successful franchise in history.