Scottish actor and producer Sean Connery (James Bond) has died aged 90
Steph Deschamps / October 31, 2020
Legendary Scottish actor Sean Connery, who first played James Bond, has died at the age of 90.
The family of Sean Connery announced the death of the 90-year-old Scottish actor on Saturday. He has, in total, starred in seven episodes of the James Bond franchise.
In 2000, he was knighted by Queen Elisabeth II for service to British cinema.
Sean Connery has also appeared in The Pursuit of Red October, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Incorruptibles.
For the latter film, the Scotsman won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1988. He also won three Golden Globes and two Baftas, among others.
He had been retired since 2003 and his role in the film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Some of his greatest hits
- James Bond, six times -
In 1962, the James Bond myth was born with James Bond 007 against Dr No. To embody his character, the novelist Ian Flemming had rather thought of Cary Grant. Facing the divine Ursula Andress, he initially judges Sean Connery too frustrated. But he will change his mind quickly. With Good Kisses from Russia by Terence Young (1963) and Goldfinger by Guy Hamilton (1964), Sean Connery definitively establishes the myth 007, the British secret agent who elegantly mixes machismo, desire to fight and good manners. Next came Operation Thunder (1965) by Terence Young, You Only Live Twice (1967) by Lewis Gilbert, Diamonds Are Eternal (1971) by Guy Hamilton and finally the unofficial Never Never Again ( 1983) by Irvin Kershner where the aged James Bond is sent to cure by his superior.
- No Spring for Marnie (1964) -
In one of Alfred Hitchcock's most cruel films, Sean Connery - who thus escapes his character from 007 - plays a wealthy editor who falls in love with a young, frigid kleptomaniac secretary (Tippie Hedren). The master of suspense seems fascinated by Sean Connery and his almost cartoonish manhood, his obsessive way of protecting the one who will become his wife and the discovery of all his psychoses that frighten and excite him.
- The man who wanted to be king (1975) -
In the 1880s, two former British officers meet Rudyard Kipling and offer him to take Kafiristan, a mythical country where no white has entered since Alexander the Great. John Huston delivers a thrilling adventure film with a passionate and mystical Sean Connery and a down-to-earth Michael Caine.
- The name of the rose, 1986 -
Sean Connery, then in disgrace, was far from Jean-Jacques Annaud's first choice to play the lead role of monk Guillaume de Baskerville. But the French director says he got goose bumps when the Scotsman started reading the script and hires him against the advice of his agent who calls him old-fashioned. Umberto Eco, the Italian author of The Name of the Rose, had similar concerns. What you did best was what I feared the most. Sean Connery is formidable, he said to Jean-Jacques Annaud. The role earned the Scots a Bafta for Best Actor.
- The Untouchables, 1987 -
Brian De Palma's Prohibition-Era Underworld Masterpiece to Earn Oscar and Golden Globe for Sean Connery (Best Supporting Actor) and Worst Movie Accent of All Time. Sean Connery, an old cop who knows the world of thugs well, steals the show from young Kevin Costner against the great Robert de Niro in unassailable Al Capone.
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) -
In 1989, Steven Spielberg came up with the idea of reuniting Harrison Ford and Sean Connery in a formidable acting duo that would make a triumph. Sean Connery plays with malice and elegance a bizarre medievalist mysteriously disappeared whom his son, the adventurer Indiana Jones, will try to find. In 2008, when Sean Connery had been retired for five years, he refused to replay his role in the fourth installment of the series Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, deeming it too anecdotal.