Sean Connery

The milkman who didn't want to be a spy

Thomas Sean Connery delivered milk bottles through the streets of Edinburgh before the world decided he was a knight. He had no academic training in drama and no industry connections. He had only a body built in the gym, a past in the Royal Navy, and a voice that echoed to the back rows of the theater.

In 1962 he slipped into the suit of Dr. No without knowing that the character would become his golden cage. The producers were looking for someone with aristocratic elegance, but he brought an animal-like ferocity that did not appear in Ian Fleming's books. That contrast worked right away.

The audience went wild.

But the massive fame felt suffocating to him. He shot five films in the franchise almost back to back and quit for the first time in 1967 because he hated the press harassment. He felt the James Bond character was swallowing up his chances to play roles with more dramatic weight. So he decided to look for projects that would break his image as an infallible leading man.

He worked under Alfred Hitchcock in Marnie and got down in the mud with Sidney Lumet to shoot The Hill. In this latter film, he proved he could carry a suffocating military drama without gadgets or cover-girl love interests. His salary for returning to the Bond franchise in 1971 was 1.25 million dollars, an astronomical figure for the time, which he donated in full to an educational organization in Scotland.

A Refuge in Supporting Roles

During the seventies, his career went through dark valleys and projects that never quite clicked at the box office. But Connery didn't give up. He starred in The Man Who Would Be King alongside Michael Caine in 1975 and proved that maturity suited him better than youth. His beard was starting to gray, and his baldness, which he had always hidden with a toupee in action movies, stopped being a problem for him.

Then 1987 arrived.

Brian De Palma called him to play a veteran cop in The Untouchables. His performance as Jim Malone earned him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and returned him to the front lines of Hollywood. It was the only time the Academy gave him a competitive award throughout his career.

From then on, his presence in a movie was synonymous with authority. He played the father of Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989 and a Soviet captain in The Hunt for Red October a year later. He commanded millions for brief appearances because his name alone on the poster guaranteed the project's profitability.

A Forced Retirement Due to Chaos

The turn of the century didn't sit well with his view of filmmaking. In 2000, he starred in Finding Forrester, but the industry was shifting toward digital effects and soulless blockbuster productions. He preferred the craftsman's approach and solid scripts.

His last real appearance in front of the camera came in 2003 with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The shoot in Prague was a technical and personal disaster. Connery had a violent argument with director Stephen Norrington and was so fed up with modern methods that he decided never to set foot on a film set again.

And he kept his word.

He turned down roles in big franchises and settled in his home in the Bahamas to play golf and escape the noise of California. He only lent his voice once more to an animated project in 2012 titled Sir Billi, which passed through theaters without much fanfare or acclaim.

He died on October 31, 2020 at his home in Nassau while sleeping. He was 90 years old and left an estate worth more than $300 million. His death certificate listed the main cause as respiratory failure caused by pneumonia and atrial fibrillation.