Sean Connery

For Connery fans.

BBC Parkinson, 18 mins.
Great interview.
Talk shows used to be about life experience, knowledge, meaningful stuff, instead of flashy, prepackaged, safe soundbites. Corporations own most of the media we consume. It's no accident that shows have continually been dumbed down. It makes people easier to influence into becoming simple consumers for their products. Don't buy it. Reject the System. Educate yourself. Think for yourself. Your life, your family's life, and the next generation depends on it.

For the true fan:

BBC Scene by Scene, 48 mins.
Sean Connery watches scenes from his films, talks about how they were made and his life.

Thunderball, Original Soundtrack, Playlist

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“My final guest became an international star 40 years ago As the first and the best James Bond. Today at the age of 73 he's still playing the action hero in his latest Film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Steven Spielberg said there were seven genuine movie stars in the world, and Sean Connery is one of them.”
Parkinson intro, 2003, BBC

You don’t become a well loved actor without drive, intelligence, and talent. Sean Connery grew up poor in a rough neighborhood. Like most people after the war he started working as a kid, doing any job he could find. He learned the value of education when he was working in a theater group. An actor suggested he become one himself and gave him a list of books to read. Shakespeare, Stanislavsky, etc., and Sean taught himself how to act.

“All the actors who’ve inhabited the role of James Bond have enjoyed the trappings of style—killing bad guys in Savile Row bespoke—but only one of them can truly be said to have style... Sean Connery is still the yardstick by which all other Bonds are measured—the arched eyebrow, the dry wolfish smile. But we at GQ think it mostly has to do with the way he moved. It only looked effortless:

Before he was cast in Dr. No, Connery was an ardent student of the Swedish movement teacher Yat Malmgren, whose book on body technique became Connery’s bible. That’s how the former bricklayer from a hardscrabble section of Edinburgh learned to walk with (in one observer’s memorable phrase) “the threatening grace of a panther on the prowl.”

That walk, and how he moved, was what set him apart from the rest and how he got the role of Bond. He was tough and could handle himself in real life. In his youth he had to fight a few street gang members who took a liking to his jacket. Everyone all around got bruises but he kept the jacket. And he lost his virginity early on to an older woman. So even then he was Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

When he was cast as Bond, director Terence Young added the final pieces. Young taught him how to dress, to feel comfortable in a suit. He told Sean to sleep in a suit so it would be a second skin.

He taught Sean all the fine wines, food, tailors, all the trappings that Fleming himself was into. And Terence and Sean shared a sense of humor which was absent in Fleming’s novels. They brought that dry humor to Bond on film and made it more accessible to a worldwide audience.

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Sean never forgot where he came from and he gave back to those in need there, stressing education and self-reliance, and fighting for Scottish independence. He quit playing Bond after Thunderball, and the producers lured him back with a $1 million fee to do Diamonds Are Forever. It was the highest sum ever paid to an actor at that time. He took it all and set up an educational trust fund in Scotland, which gives grants for people’s schooling.

The measure of a man isn’t how much money he made. It’s how much joy he gave to people. Sean made so many people happy around the world. And because of movies and technology, he’s still with us.

The reason Bond is so loved is because of Sean. He embodied the hero we always need. Bond is a leader. He reminds us what we aspire to. He challenges us to make things right. He gets things done when times are tough. After a Bond film you walk a little taller, run a little faster, feel like you can do more.

He always runs, while others walk
He acts while other men just talk
He looks at this world and wants it all
So he strikes, like Thunderball

He knows the meaning of success
His needs are more so he gives less
They call him the winner who takes all
And he strikes like Thunderball

Any woman he wants, he'll get
He will break any heart without regret
His days of asking are all gone
His fight goes on and on and on
But he thinks that the fight is worth it all
So he strikes like Thunderball

RIP Sir Sean. We’ll take it from here.
Sean Connery (Aug. 25, 1930 to October 31, 2020) 90 years old.