Edinburgh, Scotland · 1930 – 2020

SeanConnery

The Edinburgh milkman who became James Bond, escaped him through a decade of deliberate against-type choices, and won the Academy Award at fifty-seven for The Untouchables — the only man ever named People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive and then, a decade later, Sexiest Man of the Century, who remained himself at every age and was knighted in the year before he retired.

1
Academy Award
Won
6
Official
Bond Films
90
Years
of Life
Sean ConneryPortrait · Sean Connery
Biography

From Edinburgh's Fountainbridge to Bond — and Beyond Bond

Born Thomas Sean Connery on August 25, 1930, in Edinburgh, Scotland — the son of a factory worker and a cleaning lady, raised in the Fountainbridge district, leaving school at thirteen to work as a milkman, then a labourer, a steelworker, a bricklayer, a lifeguard, a model, and a coffin polisher. He competed in the 1950 Mr. Universe contest as a bodybuilder, finishing third in the tall man category, and used the contacts to get work as a chorus boy in the touring production of South Pacific, which led to acting.

Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman's Dr. No (1962) — Connery as James Bond, Ian Fleming's British intelligence officer — established the character and the persona simultaneously. Fleming had opposed the casting (he considered Connery too rough); the audiences and the subsequent half-century proved Fleming wrong. Six official Bond films between 1962 and 1967; then the departure that most actors would not have made: a decade of deliberate against-type choices designed to escape the character.

Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987) — Connery as Jim Malone, the Chicago beat cop who joins Eliot Ness's Prohibition-era task force — won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at fifty-seven. The Oscar was the public acknowledgment that the escape from Bond had succeeded; that the Edinburgh milkman who had been told he was too rough for the role of a fictional British spy had, in the intervening twenty-five years, become one of the most respected actors of his generation.

He retired from acting in 2006 after refusing the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings (he said he didn't understand the script) and the role of the Architect in The Matrix sequels. He received a BAFTA Fellowship in 2006 and was knighted in 2000. He died on October 31, 2020, in Nassau, the Bahamas, aged ninety, in his sleep.

1930
Born Edinburgh; school left at thirteen; milkman; bricklayer; Mr. Universe third
1962
Dr. No — Bond established; Fleming opposed the casting; audiences overruled Fleming
1967
Leaves Bond after You Only Live Twice; the escape from the character begins
1975
The Man Who Would Be King — Huston; Caine; the range confirmed
1987
The Untouchables — Malone; De Palma; Oscar won at fifty-seven
2000
Knighted by the Queen; lifelong Scottish independence advocate; proud of both
2020
Dies in Nassau; age 90; in his sleep; the Edinburgh milkman at his rest
Filmography

From Bond's First Introduction to Malone's Chicago

1987Crime Drama · Brian De Palma · Kevin Costner · Robert De Niro
The Untouchables
Brian De Palma's Prohibition drama — Connery as Jim Malone, the Chicago beat cop of Irish descent who joins Eliot Ness's task force and who provides both the moral authority and the practical wisdom that Ness lacks. The Academy Award at fifty-seven; the role that completed the escape from Bond; and the performance that demonstrated what had been built in the intervening twenty-five years of against-type choices: a specific gravity, a specific experience in the voice, that Bond had never required and Malone needed entirely.
Oscar Won

Malone's quality — the man who has seen enough of Chicago to know what fighting Capone will cost and who joins anyway because the alternative is worse — is played by Connery with the specific weight of someone whose age is an asset rather than a liability: the experience that has made him cautious and the courage that has made him act despite the caution. "Here endeth the lesson" — Malone's death scene — is played by Connery with a completeness that the Oscar recognised: the character dying as he lived, teaching Ness something about the price of what they are doing.

1962Spy Action · Terence Young · Eon Productions · EON
Dr. No
Terence Young's adaptation of the Ian Fleming novel — Connery as James Bond, British intelligence officer, sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of a colleague and encountering Julius No, the criminal mastermind whose radio jamming threatens the American space programme. The first Bond film; the introduction of the persona; and the performance that established a template for screen masculinity that the subsequent sixty years of cinema have been in conversation with.

Bond's quality — the ease with danger, the specific irony that is never cynicism, the competence that never becomes arrogance — is established in Dr. No with the completeness that meant Connery could not be replaced without the replacement being defined by the comparison. "Bond. James Bond." — spoken to the camera across a gaming table in the first minute of the first film, delivered with the specific confidence of a man who has decided his name is sufficient introduction — is the most replicated self-introduction in cinema history.

1975Adventure · John Huston · Michael Caine · Rudyard Kipling
The Man Who Would Be King
John Huston's Kipling adaptation — Connery as Daniel Dravot, the British soldier who travels with his partner Peachy (Caine) to Kafiristan, where they set themselves up as kings. The most important film of the post-Bond decade; the Connery-Caine partnership; and the performance that demonstrated the physical authority that Bond had exploited could carry a character of genuine ambition and genuine tragedy.

Dravot's quality — the ambition that exceeds the man, the courage that becomes hubris, the specific tragedy of a man who achieves something impossible and then destroys it with the one decision that his ambition made inevitable — is played by Connery with the authority that Huston recognised as the rare thing: an actor whose physical presence and dramatic intelligence were equal to a genuinely large subject. The final scene — Dravot's death, which he meets with the specific equanimity of a man who always knew it would end this way — is the career's most complete dramatic moment before The Untouchables.

1989Adventure · Steven Spielberg · Harrison Ford · Henry Jones Sr.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Spielberg's third Indiana Jones film — Connery as Henry Jones Sr., Indiana's father, a medieval scholar whose obsession with the Holy Grail has defined and distorted his relationship with his son. The performance that demonstrated the Oscar had not finished him as a film presence; the comedy that the Bond films had always contained and that the dramatic career had mostly suppressed; and the specific quality of a father-son relationship played by two men who made the dynamic feel earned.

Henry Sr.'s quality — the absent father who is now present, whose obsession and whose love are inextricable, whose formality with his son is the specific formality of a man who does not know how to repair what his absence created — is played by Connery with the warmth that the Bond persona had never required. The father-son dynamic worked because Ford and Connery had the necessary quality: the mutual respect of two men who understood each other's instrument and found the working relationship produced something neither could have generated alone.

"

There is nothing like a challenge to bring out the best in a man.

— Sean Connery
Honors

One Oscar — Knighted — Sexiest Man of the Century

Academy Award — Best Supporting Actor
1988
The Untouchables
Won for Jim Malone at fifty-seven — the career's most important single recognition, awarded for the role that completed the proof that the escape from Bond had succeeded. The Oscar acknowledged what the preceding twenty-five years of against-type choices had been building: the gravity, the authority, the experience in the voice that Malone required and that the Bond years had never had occasion to deploy.
Oscar Won
BAFTA Fellowship
2006
Career Achievement
BAFTA Fellowship — the highest honour the British Academy bestows, given for an outstanding contribution to film or television. The Fellowship was awarded the year Connery retired from acting, a retirement he maintained with the same decisiveness that had characterised the Bond departure forty years earlier. When he decided he was done, he was done; there were no comeback tours.
BAFTA Fellowship
Knighted — KBE
2000
Commander of the British Empire
Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000 — an honour he had been campaigning for since the 1990s, reportedly delayed by his vocal support for Scottish independence. He received the knighthood in traditional Highland dress, which the palace allowed. He remained a lifelong advocate for Scottish independence and made a donation to the Scottish National Party upon receiving the honour, which some at the palace considered pointed.
Sir Sean Connery
People Magazine
1989 + 1999
Sexiest Man Alive & Sexiest Man of the Century
Named People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive in 1989 (at fifty-nine) and Sexiest Man of the Century in 1999 (at sixty-nine) — the only person to receive both designations, and both at ages that made the designations arguments about what kind of attractiveness endures. The honours are comic appendages to a serious career; they are also accurate observations about what the camera had always seen in the Edinburgh milkman.
Sexiest Man of the Century
Identity

Bond's Trap — The Escape — The Edinburgh Stubbornness

Bond's Definition
Six official Bond films between 1962 and 1967; one unofficial return in 1983. The character defined him to audiences for decades and provided the financial security that made the subsequent career choices possible. The trap was real: every subsequent role was measured against Bond, and every departure from the type was described as an escape rather than a natural evolution. He escaped anyway.
The Deliberate Departure
The Man Who Would Be King, The Wind and the Lion, Robin and Marian, A Bridge Too Far — the post-Bond decade of against-type choices that built the dramatic instrument the Oscar would eventually recognise. Each choice was deliberate; each was a refusal to capitalise on the established persona; and the sequence produced an actor of genuinely increased range rather than a star coasting on an established image.
The Edinburgh Identity
The Edinburgh accent — retained through every role, including Bond — is the career's most visible assertion of identity. He was offered voice coaching to soften it and refused. The accent is in Dr. No, in The Untouchables, in The Last Crusade, in every role for fifty years. The Edinburgh milkman was always present; the roles were worn over him rather than replacing him.
The Scottish Question
A lifelong advocate for Scottish independence — a position he held from the 1970s through his death and that caused the knighthood to be delayed for years. He lived in the Bahamas but considered himself Scottish before he considered himself anything else. The accent, the Highland dress at the investiture, the SNP donation on the day of the knighthood: the identity was not performed; it was constitutional.
Legacy

Bond's Introduction — Malone's Lesson — The Milkman's Persistence

Sean Connery's legacy is Bond and what he did after Bond — the persona that defined screen masculinity for a generation and the subsequent career that proved the persona was a role rather than the man. One Academy Award at fifty-seven; a BAFTA Fellowship; a knighthood in Highland dress; Sexiest Man of the Century at sixty-nine; and the Edinburgh accent in every performance for fifty years: the milkman who never left Fountainbridge, regardless of where the work took him.

"Bond. James Bond." — and then twenty-five years of refusing to trade on it, building instead a dramatic career of genuine seriousness that culminated in The Untouchables and produced an Oscar that Fleming, who had opposed his casting, did not live to see. The escape from Bond is the career's central achievement; the Bond itself is why the escape was necessary and why the achievement was extraordinary. He remained himself at every age, and what he was, was enough.

Academy Award Won
The Untouchables, 1988, at age 57
1
Official Bond Films
1962 – 1967 (plus 1983 unofficial)
6
Age When Knighted
In Highland dress, 2000
70
Age at Death
Nassau, October 31, 2020
90