The Full Biography
Sean Connery. Actor. The Fountainbridge milkman who made James Bond a world climate, then spent thirty years proving the spy was only one job.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man at a casino table, saying his own last name first, as if the room had already agreed. The year was 1962. The picture was Dr. No. The face was new to most of the planet and, within a season, unforgettable. What the still cannot show is Thomas Sean Connery of Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, a laborer’s son who polished coffins and delivered milk, a Navy veteran with tattoos the tuxedos never quite hid, and a knight who died in the Bahamas still sounding like the street that made him.
He was born on August 25, 1930, in Fountainbridge, a working district of Edinburgh, to Joseph Connery, who drove a lorry and worked in a factory, and Euphemia McLean, a cleaner. The first pressure was money. He left school in his mid-teens. He joined the Royal Navy and served on HMS Formidable until a medical discharge. He drove a roadster of odd jobs: milkman, lifeguard, coffin polisher, artist’s model. He lifted weights. In 1953 he entered the Mr. Universe contest and placed third in the tall class, a fact the Bond machine would later treat as destiny and that he treated as a Saturday. The door was not a studio. It was a chorus line.
He sang and danced in the chorus of South Pacific in London. He took small film parts. Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959) put the face on an American screen. Another Time, Another Place put him opposite Lana Turner. Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, looking for a James Bond the public had only read, saw the walk and the voice and not a finished gentleman. Ian Fleming had wanted someone smoother. The producers hired the milkman. Dr. No (1962) did the rest. “Bond, James Bond,” said without hurry, became a world climate. From Russia with Love (1963). Goldfinger (1964), the peak of the first run: gold paint, a gadget car, a villain with a bowler. Thunderball (1965). You Only Live Twice (1967). He was, for a stretch, the most famous man in pictures, and he was already tired of the tux.
He used the clout. Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964) put him opposite Tippi Hedren in a picture about damage, not gadgets. Sidney Lumet’s The Hill (1965) put him in a British military prison and asked for the Navy grit the tux had covered. He married the actress Diane Cilento in 1962; they had a son, Jason. That marriage ended in 1973. He did not perform the ending. He performed the escape from Bond, which took longer.
He left the official series after You Only Live Twice, came back for Diamonds Are Forever (1971) because the money and the unfinished argument required it, and then, in 1983, made Never Say Never Again — a title that is a joke at his own expense — outside the Eon machine. George Lazenby and Roger Moore had already worn the coat. Connery’s Bond remained the one a generation heard when it heard the name. He knew it. He also knew it would eat every other part if he let it.
The years between the official Bonds are a filmography the casino still eclipses. Shalako (1968). The Molly Maguires (1970), as a Pinkerton in the Pennsylvania coal fields. The Anderson Tapes (1971) for Lumet. Zardoz (1974), John Boorman’s science-fiction oddity, a loincloth and a gun that fires at God — a picture he took because it was not a tux. The Wind and the Lion (1975) made him a Raisuli the American audience had not ordered. The Man Who Would Be King (1975), for John Huston, opposite Michael Caine, is a Kipling adventure played by two men who understood that friendship is a stunt and a sacrament. Robin and Marian (1976) put him opposite Audrey Hepburn as an aging Robin Hood. A Bridge Too Far (1977). Time Bandits (1981) for Terry Gilliam. Outland (1981), a High Noon in orbit. He was building, picture by picture, a man who had already lived a life before the camera arrived.
The Name of the Rose (1986) made him a medieval detective and won him a BAFTA. Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987) made him Jim Malone, a Chicago cop who teaches Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness how to go to the mattresses. The Academy gave him Best Supporting Actor. He was the first Scotsman to take a competitive Oscar in a major acting category. He accepted it as a worker accepts a tool.
You know, the Oscar I was awarded for The Untouchables is a wonderful thing, but I can honestly say that I’d rather have won the U.S. Open Golf Tournament.Sean Connery
The Presidio (1988). Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), as Henry Jones Sr., a father who is also a punch line and a scholar — Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford giving him the second most famous hat of his life. The Hunt for Red October (1990), as a Lithuanian submarine captain who sounds, without apology, like Fountainbridge. The Russia House (1990). Medicine Man (1992). Rising Sun (1993), from the Crichton novel, a Los Angeles picture that argued with itself. Just Cause (1995). The Rock (1996), as a man who has been in Alcatraz so long he is the island. Highlander (1986) had already made him an Egyptian-Spaniard immortal with a Scottish weather; the picture is nonsense and his Ramirez is the reason people still watch it. He was, from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, the most complete kind of older leading man: gravitas you could hire, humor you could not fake. Hollywood paid him as if Bond were still in the contract. He took the checks and spent them on parts that were not Bond, which is a form of revenge the tux never got to answer.
That is the turn, and it is easy to miss because the casino still owns the still. The turn is the refusal, expensive and incomplete, to let 007 be the whole occupation. He left, came back, left again, and spent the second half of the famous life playing teachers, fathers, thieves, and captains who had already lived a life before the camera arrived. The accent never went to finishing school. That was the point.
Six things most people never knew
- Fountainbridge is the birth certificate, not a press-kit flavor. 1930. A lorry driver, a cleaner, a boy who left school for wages. The milk route is not folklore. It was the job.
- Mr. Universe 1953 is a Saturday, not a destiny. Third in the tall class. Coffin polish and a lifeguard chair sit in the same file as the tux.
- Fleming did not want him. The producers did. The walk and the voice beat the smoother names. Bond, as the world heard him, is a Scots laborer’s invention more than the novelist’s.
- The Hill and Marnie are the first escapes. Hitchcock and Lumet, mid-1960s, while the gadgets were still new. He was already looking for a room without a Walther.
- The Oscar is Malone, 1987, not Bond. First Scot to take a major competitive acting Academy Award. He would have traded it, he said, for a U.S. Open.
- The knighthood is 2000, and he did not use the title as a personality. A fantastic honour, he said, and not something he intended to wear around the house.
He married the artist Micheline Roquebrune in 1975. They made a life in Marbella and then in Lyford Cay, in the Bahamas, a distance from Edinburgh that did not change the voice. He supported Scottish nationalism and the SNP in a way that irritated Westminster and pleased Fountainbridge. He played golf as if it were a second craft. Jason Connery went into the family business. Friends from the Bond years describe a man who could be blunt to the point of bruise and loyal to the point of legend. Both are in the interviews. He did not sand them down.
The later years
The years after The Rock were a tapering by choice. The Avengers (1998) was a misfire he did not pretend otherwise. Entrapment (1999) opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones was a caper that remembered the old walk. Finding Forrester (2000) made him a recluse writer who teaches a Bronx student, a part that is already a farewell if you let it be. He was named People’s Sexiest Man of the Century in 1999, a tabloid sacrament he accepted with a raised eyebrow. On July 5, 2000, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him. He took the honour as a Scot who had not moved his vowels to suit London.
The knighthood I received was a fantastic honour but it’s not something I’ve ever used and I don’t think I ever will.Sean Connery
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) became his last feature. The production was a misery. He looked at the new machinery of pictures — the second units, the digital weather, the committees — and decided the job as he understood it was over. He announced his retirement and meant it. Offers came. He played golf. He stayed in Lyford Cay with Micheline. He did not become a talk-show knight. He did not become a Bond convention. He became an old man in the sun who had already been the most famous spy on earth and a Chicago cop and a boy’s father in a fedora, and who no longer needed to prove the range.
The last public decade was quieter than the brand. There were honorary tributes, an AFI life achievement in 2006, the occasional photograph of a white beard and the same brow. He played golf at Lyford Cay as if the course were a second studio. Micheline kept the house. Jason kept the name in the family business. Connery gave money and voice to Scottish causes and did not sand the opinions for London editors. He had been, for years, a man who said the union did not have his heart. The knighthood did not change the sentence. It only changed the envelope the sentence arrived in.
Reports after his death said dementia had been part of the end; the family did not make a tour of it. He died on October 31, 2020, at home in the Bahamas. He was ninety. Edinburgh claimed him. The Bond machine claimed him. Fountainbridge, if a district can claim, had never let him go. The funeral was private. The obituaries led with the casino. The better ones remembered the milk route and Malone. A year of pandemic weather kept the civic farewell smaller than the fame. That, too, fitted a man who had already walked off the set when the set no longer looked like work.
He left no third act of talk-show repentance and no authorized tour of the tattoos. What he left was a walk, a voice, a Chicago cop, a boy’s father in a fedora, and a retirement he did not un-retire when the money blinked. The Bond industry went on hiring faces. None of them had delivered milk in Fountainbridge. That remains the un-copyable part. In Marbella and then in Lyford Cay he had already practiced the private life the retirement only made official: golf at dawn, a newspaper, Micheline’s studio, the occasional visitor who learned not to ask him to say the line. He had said the line enough. He had also, in Finding Forrester and in Malone and in Henry Jones’s classroom exasperation, said everything else he intended to say with a camera. The rest was the course, the island, and a Scotsman who had stopped performing the job of being Sean Connery for strangers.
He had been, for a long stretch, the face a certain idea of masculinity rented. He had also been a man who walked off that rental and did the work that interested him, then walked off the work when the work no longer looked like work. The second walk is rarer than the first. He took both.
After he was gone
Eon kept making Bonds. Each new actor still pays a tax to the 1962 walk whether the press release says so or not. Goldfinger still teaches a franchise how to be a toy and a film at once. The Untouchables still teaches a young cop in a movie how to listen. Jason has the private remainder. Micheline had the Bahamas house. Scotland has the accent, which never left, and the nationalist who did not sand himself for a knighthood.
He came out of Fountainbridge, delivered milk, stood on a Mr. Universe dais, said his name in a Jamaican casino, left the tux, came back, left again, won an Oscar as a Chicago cop, played Indy’s father, took a knight’s honour he would not wear around the house, and died in the Bahamas still sounding like Edinburgh. If you only remember the casino, you have the still. If you remember the milk route, The Hill, Malone, and a man who stopped when the job stopped being the job, you have him.
Portrait: Comet Photo AG (Zürich) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons