Sean Connery: Versatile actor who gave James Bond a licence to thrill

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. I don’t think he approved of me terribly.” The producers had complete confidence in their choice, advertising the film with the slogan, “Sean Connery is James Bond”, and audiences loved the insouciance and brio that Connery brought to the role, achieving a potent mix of virility, smooth sexuality and a tinge of self-mockery that his successors found difficulty matching. In a story of this kind you need a real gentleman, a more elegant man than what we had.” As Bond, who never lacked elegance, Connery continued to have huge box-office hits, with Thunderball, a huge moneymaker but a lesser Bond, with much of the action taking place underwater, and You Only Live Twice, promoted as the last Bond film to star Connery, while non-Bond films included Irvin Kershner’s A Fine Madness, a quirky tale of a poet determined to write a masterpiece, and a sprawling western, Shalako. To play the title character, whose name means “he who brings water”, Connery declined to play Bond again in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which gave George Lazenby his chance to play 007. Fred Zinnemann’s mountaineering tale Five Days One Summer, lacked excitement, but cast member Anna Massey later stated, “Sean Connery was charming, and couldn’t have been more fun.” In total, though, Connery’s films had not been too successful, and in 1983 he agreed to return to the role of Bond in the appropriately titled, Never Say Never Again.