Sean Connery biography

When the contract was up, he had another stroke of luck. Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert "Cubby" Broccoli cast him as the lead in a spy movie based on one of a series of Ian Fleming novels, Dr. No — and Bond, James Bond,

was born. The film was hugely successful and had immediate sequels: From Russia with Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964). Thunderball (1965) and You Only Live Twice (1967) followed.

Sly, sexy, and confident, Connery as Bond was the embodiment of the British secret agent (even if he did have to wear a toupee to cover his prematurely balding head). "We all knew this guy had something," Saltzman would recall. "We signed him without a screen test. We all agreed, he was 007." A notable non-Bond role was in Alfred Hitchcock's psychological thriller Marnie (1964). He declared his last role as Bond would be in 1971's Diamonds Are Forever.

Personal Challenges

His acting career now cemented, Connery decided it was time to settle his personal affairs as well. Diane was now divorced, and the pair wed secretly at the Rock of Gibraltar in November 1962 while Connery was filming his second Bond film, From Russia With Love. They honeymooned briefly in Spain before the actor returned to the States for a flood of publicity. Connery thrived on the attention and adoration: "Now, I can kill any s.o.b. in the world and get away with it," he bragged to The Saturday Evening Post. "I eat and drink nothing but the very best, and I also get the loveliest ladies in the world."

But Connery had a tendency to go too far in interviews. For example, he told a London newspaper his opinion on hitting women: "An open-handed slap is justified. So is putting your hand over her mouth." He later told Playboy, "I don't think there's anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman ... if all other alternatives fail and there's plenty of warning."

The comments came back to haunt him when, in 1973, 10 years after his son Jason was born, he and Cilento divorced amidst a flurry of tabloid rumors that he had abused her. Connery denied them all, and married French-Moroccan artist Micheline Roquebrune in 1975—again at Gibraltar. The pair met in a golf tournament in Morocco (golf was a shared passion). He won the men's award; she, the women's.

Being 007

By this time, Connery had made a total of six Bond pictures, and fans were in a frenzy. Once, he looked up from a urinal to find a photographer snapping a photo. The man who once reveled in notoriety now shrunk from the spotlight. He retreated from Hollywood, moving his wife and her three children from her first marriage into mansions in England and Marbella, Spain. It would be more than a decade before he reluctantly agreed to reprise his Bond role one last time, in 1983's Never Say Never Again. For this, he was paid salary of several million dollars—a far cry from the original $16,000 he earned for Dr. No.

Despite the money, Connery was bitter and criticized Broccoli and Saltzman for stifling his talent.