The news ofSean Connery’s death first broke in Japan.
“She phoned up our house in a panic.
My wife told her, ‘Dead?
EW
He’s just out playing golf.'”
It was like pushing a quart into a pint bottle.
But when you find something you want to do, you do it."
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Much more impressive, he’s kept up his credentials as an international sex symbol.
God, yes," says Ormond.
“As a kid, he was always my favorite Bond.
Then you meet him, and he has this very powerful presence.
He’s totally in command.
But he’s also very gentle.”
Connery’s character inJust Causeis a long way from the martini-sipping secret agent of his youth.
An anti-capital punishment intellectual, he doesn’t even throw his first punch until the film’s final reel.
He can say more with a raised eyebrow than most actors can with a whole paragraph of dialogue."
“He’s a leading man in hissixties.
How many other actors can say that?”
“I think the fact that one’s hair disappeared early made it easier,” he offers.
“I never had a ‘transition problem.’
And this year, I’m going to be 65.
I’m hardly going to get into a weight program and doTarzan.
In fact, at times he looks as if he actually might.
High-powered producers and directors have been known to tremble in his presence.
Even his celebrity golfing buddies have called him"highly competitive.”
“If I’m grouchy, it’s with reason,” he says grouchily.
“If I have to deal with idiots, I can get cantankerous.”
He can also get litigious.
“I hate unfairness,” he says.
About the only group Connery distrusts more than bookkeepers are journalists.
More recently, he’s been hounded by questions about his health.
“I had them lasered off each time.
But thenI had a little twinge of a problem while I was doingRising Sun.
I couldn’t get the timbre of my voice right.
I couldn’t get the variation and enunciation as comfortable as I wanted.
So I went back to the doctor and he suggested radiation.
I went for six weeks and didn’t have any side effects or problems.
Then I made the announcement that I had done radiation treatment.
The publicists said not to do it, that it would set off an explosion.
The publicists were right.
“And that was it.
Now everyone knows I’m alive.”
“I heard my own voice coming from one of the rooms.
My grandchildren were watchingGoldfinger.
So I sat down with them and watched for a bit.
There was a certain elegance, a certain assurance to it that was quite comforting.
There was a leisureliness that made you not want to rush to the next scene.
Of course, I also saw things that could have been improved.”
Not surprisingly, Connery is a tad ambivalent about his most famous big-screen alter ego.
On the one hand, the character was by far the most important break of his career.
It made him a millionaire, a sex symbol, a global superstar.
On the other hand, you get tired of all that.
“It was a case of phasing out and getting on to other things,” he says.
“Also, they started getting into all this space stuff.
They kept upping the physical hardware.
You do five or six of these things and people put a tag on you.
It can get rather limiting.”
The story of how Connery nabbed the role is a classic showbiz tale.
Supposedly, producers Saltzman and Broccoli were discussing casting him forDr.
Nowhen they spied the actor “striding like a panther” outside their window.
Fortunately, he’s a pretty good sport about it.
“I think they have to create an absolutely ’90s milieu for the character today,” he says.
“I mean, we no longer have the Evil Empire.
The Chinese are knocking on the door with trade agreements.The whole world is trying to get into balance.
They have to rethink the whole idea.”
“He’s a good actor,” he says.
“He’ll add some new elements to it.”
As for Connery’s own future, one thing is absolutely certain.
Like SPECTRE’s evil overlord Ernst Stavro Blofeld, he long ago said, Goodbye, Mr. “I couldn’t play him now,” he insists.
“It’d be silly even to contemplate.
I’ve outlived him.
“And you know what they say you only out live once.
