Remembering Sean Connery

Aren: Every passing year it grew more inevitable, and since his retirement in the years following The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, you’d be forgiven for thinking he had already died, but it finally happened. Sir Sean Connery died at the age of 90. Every time a great actor passes, there are numerous obituaries and reports that remind us of all the wonderful work this actor did. With Connery, no reminders are needed. He looms so large over the history of movies that he took his place alongside icons like Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, and Marlon Brando while he was still alive and working. He was a star from the moment Dr. No hit the screen and he’ll remain a star long after the news of his death is archived. 

There have been many great movie stars over the decades, and a few individuals who could be credited as being the greatest movie star of their generation. I’d say that Sean Connery was the greatest movie star of them all. That’s just how much I loved his work as a film actor. I would never argue that he had the best filmography of any great actor. Many of the films he starred in weren’t very good, but it was never because of him. He elevated everything he worked on, in the sense that not only did his presence make films better, but that he transformed whatever scene he was playing into something more vital and alive than it could’ve been without him.

That’s what great movie stars do; they don’t just make the material seem credible—they make it seem fantastic. For them, life looks impossibly more interesting than it ever is in real life. Connery made many bad movies, but he never gave an uninteresting performance, and even in films that are highly questionable (Meteor or The Avengers or John Boorman’s Zardoz), you can hardly blame the man for the failure of the work. He was a professional and that meant giving a solid go at the material and trying to make it entertaining for the viewer. When he had material that matched his talent and professionalism, the results were outstanding, as you got with the James Bond 007 films or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or his many films with Sidney Lumet or Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. Even in something as otherwise disposable as First Knight or The Presidio, Connery was the highlight. He was a star from his breakthrough in 1962 until his final film in 2003. In every single one of the films between these years, no one commanded greater attention on screen, even if he shared the film with other great movie stars. Hell, him showing up for two minutes at the end of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as King Richard the Lionheart is arguably the highlight of the film! That’s why I think Connery was the greatest. His star wattage outshone everyone else.

Anders: Not much more I can add to what Aren has said, but I have long maintained, as Aren does, that Sean Connery was my favourite movie star of all time.

He was a true icon of the silver screen, and beyond. Few actors are able to mark the medium indelibly with their person. His Scottish accent and sharp, hawkish features never faded over time, making them easily and instantly recognizable for aspiring impressionists. But despite the easily caricatured traits, his own status and screen presence was never drained of its power. Even in his weakest films, he brought a kind of magic.

Anton: Sean Connery was one of a handful of actors whose presence automatically boosted a movie’s enjoyment for me. Setting aside his big roles, mid-tier thrillers such as Rising Sun or the science-fiction western Outland are above average in no small part due to Connery’s presence in them.

Connery’s neither my favourite actor nor whom I consider to be the greatest movie star, but Connery is among a handful of movie stars whom I consider to be the most iconic. Although he’s been absent from the movie screen for nearly two decades now, I feel his loss in a way that I didn’t for many passings of other famous actors and actresses whom I admire. I think it was the reminder of how much enjoyment his presence in the movies has given me. Ah Connery, he will be missed.

I remember first encountering Connery as Dr. Jones in Indiana Jones and the The Last Crusade, and even before I really understood why it was such a big deal that Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones had James Bond as his father, I loved that performance. Connery had such a powerful presence on screen, underscored by his intense eyebrows and striking thick voice. When I started diving into the older Bond movies in adolescence, I began to really understand why Connery was the man.  

Anders: Connery represented a particular kind of mid-century masculinity, one that has admittedly fallen out of favour for good reasons. There was an air of danger about him, some of which certainly rubbed off on him from his portrayal of 007. But some of it is the product of his origins and the rough and dangerous world he came from, growing up in the mean streets of Edinburgh and climbing his way up through the body-building world and military service to the theatre and then cinema. Even as he aged and was no longer as physically imposing, he carried himself with a gravitas and the sense that he didn’t suffer fools gladly. He seemed to know he was a titan, and acted accordingly.

But at the same time as he exuded danger, he also displayed warmth and intimacy. He seemed to put enough of his personality into his roles that you felt that you were getting something of himself in them. It’s a rare personality that simultaneously can feel like a giant among men, but also one that never seems aloof and distant. Watching Connery on screen was being able to approach greatness.

Anton: I think that’s a good diagnosis of what Connery, as a person, brought to his roles beyond the Bond persona. A presence that combines the possibilities of dangerous strength as well as particular warmth. In that sense, we connect with Connery’s roles in a way that, I would say, we don’t feel Tom Cruise’s movie star characters.

Bond. James Bond

Anton: It’s interesting to speculate about the relationship between Bond and Connery. To what extent is every subsequent Connery performance empowered by him playing Bond, even if some of his later roles were chosen as a means to distinguish himself from his most iconic performance?

Aren: He became known as Bond and then every performance that followed either tried to distinguish himself, as you say, or rely on the associations created by his performance as Bond. Thus, the Bond films defined his career.

We talked a lot about why he was so successful in the role back during our James Bond 007 Retrospective in 2015, but it’s worth reiterating here that he gave the definitive performance of the definitive action movie hero. Even if he gave better performances in later films, the role of Bond is the one he’ll always be defined by. I revisited Dr. No after news of his death on Saturday and I’m again stunned by how incredible he is in the role. He has such vitality and energy, and, yes, danger that is startling for the period of cinema it was released in, and still startling today. The confidence and casual way that he carried himself, where he knew there was no man in the room that could beat him, came across from the moment he said those immortal words: “Bond. James Bond.”

Anders: Frankly, Connery was James Bond. Others are very good, but for me the character and the role blend into one. Knowing that despite his misgivings, even Ian Fleming was won over and wrote a half-Scottish ancestry for the character, is perhaps one of the greatest tributes imaginable.

I noted Connery’s danger in our Bond Retrospective, and I think this is the one thing that makes his Bond closest to the character as written in the books. His Bond was supremely confident. While Dalton and Craig bring back some of the brutality and danger to 007, Connery alone could embody it without second-guessing. I think of his casually tossing flowers on his enemy’s corpse in Thunderball or his infamous delivery of the line in Dr. No—“That’s a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six.”—I’m not sure many other actors could deliver those lines in a convincing way, and I think the fact that the series moved toward a winking tone after he left the series is telling.

His Bond was just so cool. It wasn’t just a suit, it was his hawk-like eyes and square yet athletic build. The cliche is true: men wanted to be him, and women wanted to be with him.

Anton: In his iconicity, Connery shares similarities to a Marilyn Monroe, taking on symbolic value in the larger culture. The difference, I would say, is that Connery’s iconicity is closely tied to one particular role, James Bond, whereas most people will recognize Monroe but might not know a role of hers from a particular movie.

It’s also worth pointing out that it’s Connery’s Bond who is the icon in cinema. He’s the touchstone for not only all subsequent Bonds but also for most every other spy or action hero who has come after. Indiana Jones’s propensity to make it up as he goes along looks even more pronounced when we compare the character to Connery’s James Bond, who is confident and projects control and domination, even when he’s been captured.

Maturing Movie Star

Aren: Few movie stars aged as gracefully or even seemed to grow more robust with age than Sean Connery. The only person I can think of who has experienced something similar is Clint Eastwood, but he embodies a crankiness that Connery never projected, even if he could be cantankerous in some later roles (such as his role as the family patriarch in the undercooked drama Family Business). 

Anton: I do think a lot of his aging presence is the fact that his Bond became such a cultural force. It’s impossible to think of Connery later on without thinking about the legendary character, whether his performance is drawing on Bond or playing off of it. I’m not saying that to diminish his more than competent acting chops.

Aren: Definitely. Immediately after leaving the Bond franchise behind, he turned towards a variety of roles that differed from Bond in an attempt to showcase his broad talents. Many of his films with Sidney Lumet, especially The Hill and The Anderson Tapes, set up the prototype for how he could leverage his physicality and gravitas into more serious fare once he had completely abandoned Bond (although we have to note that he did return to Bond with Never Say Never Again and had a pretty good time of it). He had proved he was a movie star with Bond, but he went on to prove he was a great actor with what came after.

Anders: The Man Who Would Be King is one of my favourite Connery roles, in the John Huston adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling novella, alongside his friend Michael Caine. Connery feels believable in the period adaptation, and we feel conflicted as we watch his Daniel Dravet fall prey to the temptations of colonial adventuring, showing it as both a colossal and very human flaw.

Anton: Connery’s screen presence really adds to that character. We believe that this is a man who could make himself a king in some far-flung realm. He exudes strength, but that also plays into the character’s hubris.

Anders: Even as he aged into the elder-statesmen in films like Michael Bay’s The Rock, he had a don’t-give-a-damn attitude that made him feel still more dangerous and primal than his younger costars. Could anyone else deliver the outrageous proclamation, “Your 'best'! Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen,” with genuine conviction and believability? Connery was a winner in the most dog-eat-dog sense of the term, and he brought it all to the screen.

Anton: The Rock is a good example of how Connery’s iconicity brings depth to the character beyond what is written in the screenplay. I think this also holds for a role such as his former cop and Japanese expert in Rising Sun. The casting draws on audience familiarity with Connery to suggest the character’s storied past and former exploits. The same goes for Connery’s seasoned cop in The Untouchables, or his submarine captain in The Hunt for Red October, and even his Dr. Jones, with his immense professional knowledge as well as his concealed physical abilities beneath his professorial attire. Do you notice a pattern here?

But he also did roles that were less reflexive, such as his performance in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose, adapted from Umberto Eco’s novel.

Aren: I particularly love his performance as William of Baskerville in The Name of the Rose. He won a BAFTA for it and you can see why, as it forces Connery to ditch his typical physically-dominant performance style and take on a more intellectual approach to acting. The way he expresses his experiencing love by reading Ovid or imparts lessons to young Adso (Christian Slater) is remarkably tender. It’s one of the few roles where he doesn’t seem to be playing into or against his iconography as James Bond.

Consummate Supporting Actor

Aren: When Connery did share the screen with other movie stars and took the smaller supporting role, he was able to leverage all of his charisma and eloquence as an actor into those who shared the screen with them, making them better than they’d be without him. Raiders of the Lost Ark is the best Indiana Jones movie, but there’s a reason Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is so beloved, and that reason is Connery. He was arguably the only movie star capable of cowing Harrison Ford, since his gruff masculinity was the model that informed so much of Ford’s. When Ford and Connery are on screen together, Ford is deferential, and Connery doesn’t have to do much to impose his power on Ford. 

Think of the look of absolute disappointment on Connery’s face after Ford’s Indy has successfully jammed a pole into the spokes of a Nazi soldier’s motorbike and sent him flying into the air. Ford looks at Connery, nakedly hoping his father will share his satisfaction, but Connery says nothing and stares at his sun in disapproval. Ford absolutely shrinks under Connery’s withering gaze. It’s a hilarious moment, but it’s not just a result of great camera timing. It’s also a great acting moment, since it shows the human dimensions that make Indy such a loveable character. Indy is a great action hero, but the fact that he gets knocked around and makes mistakes and can never live up to the highest ideal—the ideal he wants to reach to get the approval of his father—is the reason he’s so beloved. This short moment exemplifies this about the character. Connery brings all that humanity out of Ford by playing so quiet and so firm.

Anders: Absolutely. Connery had a gravitas to him. He didn’t need to shout. Even in all his iconic status as Indiana Jones, the only approval who Dr. Henry Jones Jr. still wanted was that of his father. It’s fitting that 007 was the onscreen father to Indiana Jones, since the early Bond films were a source of inspiration for Lucas and Spielberg. It’s a meaningful role, because despite only being a little over a decade Ford’s senior, Connery feels, as you say, appropriately paternal to a star of Ford’s stature.

Also, he does it without being a physical character, like John Patrick Mason in The Rock. Dr. Henry Jones Sr. is a man of intellect. Connery brings the strength and dignity into a character who might otherwise be a befuddled academic out of his element. Instead, with his tweeds and umbrella, he takes on the Nazi war machine.

Anton: I’ve always loved his Dr. Jones. Aren and I always joke about the scene where he is walking on the beach and Connery uses his umbrella to stir up a flock of seagulls, which the German fighter plane crashes into. This actor of immense physical strength and screen presence delivers the perfect example of brain over brawn. It’s also a good showcase for the warm humour Connery could deliver in addition to his cold one-liners. “I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne. ‘Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky,’” he explains to his son. Even the way Connery makes old-man bird noises “Coo coo coo!” to scare the seagulls up is delightful. 

Aren: He could be very funny when he needed to be. His approach to Dr. Jones is fairly gracious to the other performers on screen. Not that Connery was always so deferential when supporting other movie stars. His turn as Jim Malone in De Palma’s The Untouchables won him an Oscar. He does the heavy lifting for the verbose, aggressive screenplay from David Mamet, ramming lines like “He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.” with such conviction that it’s no wonder they gave him the Oscar. 

Anton: I know I’m repeating myself, but again, Malone has the presence and prestige in the world of that movie in no small part because Connery is Malone. Just think about another actor playing him, and who would remember the character? No one else could have earned an Oscar for that character.

Aren: Definitely. Malone is just an ordinary Chicago cop, but the fact that he’s an ordinary cop played by Connery makes him this titan. There’s a nice anecdote shared in Michael Phillips’ remembrance of Connery from the Tribune about how Connery worked hard to make Kevin Costner more confident on screen. Costner was uncomfortable with Mamet’s dialogue, as in many ways it represented the apotheosis of his sensitive leading man approach, and so he was unsure during many takes. But Connery upped the bluster and masculine aggression to make Costner’s sensitivity seem a necessary foil. He sees what Costner cannot supply in each scene and more than makes up for it, making Costner look all the better because the film isn’t lacking for macho aggression when he’s on screen with Costner. That’s what being a great costar looks like.

We could go on and talk about Connery in the first two Highlander films (I wish I could scream “Ramírez!” and summon Connery back from the grave as in the second film). We could talk about his work as an eldery Robin Hood in Robin and Marian, his suave charm in Victorian outfits in Michael Crichton’s The First Great Train Robbery, or his dependable performances in genre fare in the 1990s like the aforementioned Rising Sun, The Hunt for Red October, and Just Cause. We could write about the great work he’s doing in little-seen fare like The Molly Maguires. Hell, I even like him as Allan Quartermain in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (a much-derided film I still think of fondly). 

Anton: Hey, Sean Connery as Allan Quartermain is almost the sole reason I would happily revisit The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen this or any afternoon, if I had a spare two hours. It’s great casting and a well-done performance, adding depth and emotion to a flat movie in a way that’s almost absurdly effective. And that’s also a great example of a performance in which Connery’s acquired star power fuels the legendary status that Quartermain is supposed to have, and which many audiences might not be familiar with.  

Aren: The fact that we could go on endlessly about what he brought to these roles and why we were apt to search out little-seen movies of his speaks to what an impact he had on us and what a loss his death is.

As his widow announced following his death, Connery was suffering from dementia in his final months and so a quiet death in his sleep was a small grace at the end of a remarkable life. I hope he’s found his reward and that his family is at peace, resting easy on the fact that he has left an immeasurable impact on the world of cinema.

RIP Sean Connery (1930–2020)