Thank you, IMDb, for providing a wealth of information about the entertainment world. For example, the life and work of Sean Connery:
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He was born Thomas Sean Connery on August 25, 1930 in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, and recently died at the age of 89. His mother, Euphemia C. (Maclean), was a cleaning lady, and his father, Joseph Connery, was a factory worker and truck driver. He also had a brother, Neil Connery, a plasterer in Edinburgh. He was of Irish and Scottish descent. Before going into acting, Sean had many different jobs, such as a milkman, lorry driver, a laborer, artist’s model for the Edinburgh College of Art, coffin polisher and bodybuilder. He also joined the Royal Navy, but was later discharged because of medical problems. At the age of 23, he had a choice between becoming a professional footballer or an actor, and even though he showed much promise in the sport, he chose acting and said it was one of his “more intelligent moves.”
No Road Back (1957) was Sean’s first major movie role, and it was followed by several made-for-TV movies such as ITV Television Playhouse: Anna Christie (1957), Macbeth (1961) and Anna Karenina (1961) as well as guest appearances on TV series, and also films such as Hell Drivers (1957), Another Time, Another Place (1958), Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959) and The Frightened City (1961). In 1962 he appeared in The Longest Day (1962) with a host of other stars.
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o [On A View to a Kill (1985)] Bond should be played by an actor 35, 33 years old. I’m too old. Roger’s too old, too!
o A silent gesture can convey more in a flash than a minute of spoken dialogue. Unlike most actors, who resist directors cutting their lines, I have spent my whole career filleting mine. There are few directors who have not seen my cuts as improvements. Steven Spielberg paid me the ultimate compliment on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) by adopting nine out of ten of my ideas that traded dialogue for added visual interaction.
o Anyone contemplating a film career could do no better than read Alexander Mackendrick’s book On Film-making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director.
o From the earliest days of cinema a fascination with Scottish historical themes fed the appetites of Hollywood. Macabre shockers, or what Robert Louis Stevenson called “regular crawlers”, were especially popular. Not counting numerous shorts, five feature versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) were produced in Hollywood between 1912 and 1941, though none surpassed Fredric March’s Oscar-winning performance and his menacing facial transformation in Rouben Mamoulian’s production of 1931.
o Perhaps I’m not a good actor, but I would be even worse at doing anything else.
o I realised that a top-class footballer [i.e. soccer player] could be over the hill by the age of 30, and I was already 23. I decided to become an actor and it turned out to be one of my more intelligent moves.
o It’s funny, but the film buffs at UCLA are constantly dissecting Marnie (1964) these days to see how it was done. When it was first released, there was a lot of criticism of Alfred Hitchcock because he used a studio set for the dockside scene. But the backdrop looked just like the port of Bristol – if not Baltimore, where it’s supposed to be at. I adored and enjoyed Hitchcock tremendously. He never lost his patience or composure on the set.
o It would appear I’m an inspiration for older men. Do I think I’m sexy? I’ve been told I am. I know that I find certain people attractive and they find me attractive and are presumptuous enough to think that’s sexy. I can’t answer for all those fat guys out there in their sixties. Are they more virile? Well, it’s years since I went to bed with a sixtyish balding man. Look, I’m dealing with maturity alright. I’m much more interest in keeping enthusiastic than anything else.
o The idea of the hair was the iron grew sort of crew cut but something kinda put me off that. I would have looked sort of like Ernest Hemingway with the beard and short hair and it would have looked American. So I went Rod Stewart but shorter. They had another wig but that made me look like Sting. I really couldn’t deal with it. Well, I could deal with it. I changed it. – On The Hunt for Red October (1990).
o I was going upstairs when I heard my own voice coming from one of the rooms. My grandchildren were watching Goldfinger (1964). So, I sat down with them and watched it for a bit. It was interesting. 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.
o Timothy Dalton has Shakespearean training but he underestimated the role. The character has to be graceful and move well and have a certain measure of charm as well as be dangerous. Pierce Brosnan is a good actor – he added some new elements to it.
o I’ve always been told I was either too tall or too short, too Scottish or too Irish, too young, too old.
o [On his Marnie(1964) leading lady Tippi Hedren] She’s underrated in a business where most actors are overrated.
o Robin and Marian (1976) was supposed to be called “The Death of Robin Hood”, but Americans don’t like heroes who die or anything that might not smack of being a victory.
o I’ve honestly not been too aware of my age until I went to the doctor for a full check-up. He said I had the heart of a young man, “but you’re not young, you’re 40! [Evening Standard, 1971]
o I enjoy the excitement of working on a well-crewed and exciting picture. It’s like a microcosm of society that really works. Because nothing works anywhere else.
[1973, on ‘James Bond’ producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli] They’re not exactly enamoured of each other. Probably they’re both sitting on $50 million and looking across the desk at each other and thinking, ‘That bugger’s got half of what should be all mine’.
o Let me straighten you out on this. The problem in interviews of this sort is to get across the fact, without breaking your arse, that one is NOT Bond, that one was functioning reasonably before Bond and that one is going to function reasonably after Bond. There are a lot of things I did before Bond – like playing the classics on stage – that don’t seem to get publicized. So you see, this Bond image is a problem in a way and a bit of a bore, but one has to live with it. [David Zinman: Saturday Afternoon at the Bijou, 1973]
o I have no shortage of material or offers, it’s just a case of what you select to do. But I think it’s realistic that my chances of playing Romeo are now over.
o (On George Lazenby) I have known George for many years and arrogance is not in his character. Alas I cannot say the same for Cubby Broccoli.
o Show me a man who says he is content and I’ll show you a lobotomy scar.
o [On the death of Roger Moore] I was very sad to hear of Roger’s passing. We had an unusually long relationship, by Hollywood standards, that was filled with jokes and laughter. I will miss him.
o I’ve always supported the UK film industry, and even if it’s not a UK film I’ve been doing, I’ve done my best to bring as many films as possible here instead of filming in America or elsewhere.
o [On his salary in the Bond films] I know what it is to be without money, and know exactly what money is to me. I dislike intensely injustice, and Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli were frightfully greedy people.
o Maybe it’s because they were UK films but the Bond films never really got the full credit they deserved for the production side of things. The sets and the scope – they really changed cinema, and I don’t think many people fully appreciated that aspect of them at the time. I think it was more about the action, gadgets and women.
o [On receiving his knighthood from the Queen] It was one of the greatest days of my life.
o I had been put up for a knighthood by Michael Forsyth and Virginia Bottomley, and Galbraith and Dewar said ‘no way’. Why? Because one had too much publicity associated with the nationalists. I supported the Yes-Yes vote, and it was a fantastic result, but I had already been blackballed from the knighthood.
I’m an easy target because of my political opinions. But I defy anyone in Scotland to find one detail where I knowingly ever did anything that was to the detriment of Scotland. It gets up my nose.
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