BEYOND BOND
WHEN SEAN CONNERY was awarded the American Film Institute’s prestigious Life Achievement Award on June 8, 2006, Steven Spielberg sent the character has an appeal to a cross-section of people everywhere,” the former Fountainbridge milkman would shrug in 1983, when asked to explain Bond’s popularity.
By the mid-’60s, Connery was driven not only by a passion to break away from the licensed-to-kill Commander, but also to prove there was far more to him than suave quips, sharp suits and flashy violence. More fundamentally, he wanted to establish that he and 007 were not the same person. “One is not Bond…one was functioning reasonably well before Bond…one is going to function reasonably well after Bond,” Connery told Playboy. “This Bond image is a problem in a way, and a bit of a bore.”
Over the next two decades, it seemed Connery would try anything to solve that image problem once and for all. Play a hateful, grubby copper suffering a violent nervous breakdown. Make a kids’ film with one of the Monty Python guys. Wear a
