Here
follows the November 1965 interview with
Sean Connery, conducted by David Lewin -
thanks to the Crackster. Interview
content © Playboy Enterprises, Inc.
Introduction
The Bahamas have
long been a favourite retreat for
vacationing cosmopolites in search of a
sunny sanctuary from the tumult of 20th
Century city life. Those hapless hundreds
who made the mistake of going to the
islands last March, April or May,
however, might well have wished they'd
stayed at home, for the tiny archipelago
was in a state of siege - occupied by an
invading army of newspaper reporters,
magazine writers and photographers from
nearly every major publication in
America, England, Europe, Canada,
Australia and Japan; TV camera crews from
ABC, NBC and BBC; silk-suited press
agents and swim-suited starlets; bit
players, extras, make-up men,
cinematographers, script girls, set
designers, electricians and assorted
hangers-on. The white beaches were
festooned with cables and bristling with
sound booms; the surf was as warm with
masked men in orange scuba suits armed
with spear guns. Moored offshore were a
small fleet of futuristic two-man
submarines and a huge, sleek,
95-mile-an-hour hydrofoil camouflaged in
the shell of a luxury yacht. And the
Olympic-size swimming pool of a nearby
home was stocked with a school of tiger
sharks.
At the eye of this
storm, surrounded most of the time by an
adoring mob of 200 or more gaping
tourists just beyond camera range, and
visibly annoyed by all the adulation, was
the man responsible for it all: Sean
Connery, a sinewy, saturnine, 34-year-old
Scotsman better known to the world's
moviegoers as James Bond, Ian Fleming's
indestructible superspy. Connery was
there to film "Thunderball," a
spectacular $5,500,000 production (set
for world premiere next month) that
promises to be the biggest of the
celebrated Bond flicks. The first three -
"Dr. No," "From Russia
with Love" and
"Goldfinger" - have already
been seen by 100,000,000 people; earned
more than $75,000,000; spawned a spate of
copycat spy movies and TV series;
promoted a plethora of Bond-bred 007
products ranging from toothpaste,
T-shirts, trench coats and golf clubs to
night-gowns, attaché cases, bedspreads,
toiletries and even a toy transistor
radio that turns into a rifle at the
touch of a button. And together with the
Fleming books - of which some 60,000,000
copies have been sold in 11 languages -
they've inspired a rash of scholarly
treatises purporting to assess the sexual
and sociological implications of
"the Bond syndrome." They have
also brought world-wide fame and
considerable fortune to their leading
man. Both, however, were slow in coming.
In many ways the
antithesis of his urbane, Eton-bred
screen self, Connery is an earthy sort
who prefers beer to brut blanc de blanc,
poker to chemin de fer. Son of an
Edinburgh millworker, he left school at
13 to earn his keep, mostly from hand to
mouth, as a drayhorse driver, coffin
polisher, lifeguard, seaman, artist's
model, welterweight boxer, printer's
apprentice and finally as chorus boy in a
road-company production of "South
Pacific" - at $35 a week. His
provincial head turned by "all that
easy money," Connery thought better
of an offer to exert himself as a
professional soccer player and forthwith
decided to carve out a career in show
business. After months of earnest drama
study, he began to find himself in demand
for bit parts, then featured roles and
finally leads in Shakespearean repertory
theatre (as Macbeth and Hotspur, among
others) and in London telly plays
(including the starring role in
"Requiem for a Heavyweight").
Making the movie grade at 26, he was
signed by 20th Century-Fox - only to
languish inconspicuously in a series of
forgettable films that culminated with a
walk-on in "The Longest Day."
Then, in 1961, he
got a call from a pair of American movie
producers, Albert Broccoli and Harry
Saltzman, to drop by their London office
for a job interview. He went. Though he
was still a relative unknown, the two men
were sold on the spot by his
"cocksure animal magnetism" and
decided then and there to gamble
$1,000,000 on his power to project that
quality from the screen as the star of a
property called "Dr. No." It
turned out to be a wise investment.
Within three weeks after the picture
opened, Connery was receiving several
thousand fan letters a week, and James
Bond, the character he played with such
sardonic self-assurance, was well on his
way to becoming an international folk
hero. Then came "From Russia with
Love," an even bigger hit, and
finally the blockbuster
"Goldfinger," which escalated
the Bond boom into the box-office bonanza
of the decade - and its protagonist not
only into a first-magnitude superstar but
also, in the opinion of many female fans,
the reigning masculine sex symbol of the
movies.
There's only one
flaw in the plot of this storybook saga
of success: The subject doesn't like his
role. Connery has acquitted himself
creditably enough in two non-Bond
pictures since the 007 series started (
"Marnie" and "Woman of
Straw"), and the critics have been
lavish in their praise for his
performance in "The Hill," his
latest film (reviewed in this issue); but
his public identification as Bond is so
complete that the name of the character
he plays is better known than his, and
his face - not the one described by
Fleming - is the one PLAYBOY used as a
model for the illustrations that
accompanied our exclusive prepublication
serialisations of the last three Bond
books. Contracted to make two more 007
spylarks after "Thunderball"
("On Her Majesty's Secret
Service" and probably "You Only
Live Twice" - both of them
pre-published in PLAYBOY), Connery is
ambivalent about his on-screen alter ego;
though he told one reporter recently that
"Bond's been good to me, so I
shouldn't knock him," he confessed
that he's "fed up to here with the
whole Bond bit."
In the hope of
finding out more about the man behind the
image, we approached his press
representatives in London with our
request for an exclusive interview. Our
chances of getting to see him were none
too good, they said, for Connery has
become increasingly reluctant, in the
clamorous months since
"Goldfinger," to talk to the
press about Bond - or about anything
else, for that matter. After a two-week
wait, we repeated our request in a note
addressed to his home, a former convent
in a west London suburb where he lives
with his wife, actress Diane Cilento, and
their two children. He called us the next
day and invited us to share a pint at a
local pub. We did, and found him at first
almost as reticent as reputed. But he
began to unbend after a few more brews,
and before long was talking to us more
freely, frankly and fully than he ever
has before for publication. A few weeks
later we joined him between scenes during
the filming of "Thunderball" in
the Bahamas, where we sat on set and
completed our conversations - which had
dwelled at length on the very subject
we'd been warned he wouldn't discuss:
James Bond.
Interview
PLAYBOY: How do you
account for the phenomenal success of the
Bond books and films?
CONNERY: Well,
timing had a lot to do with it. Bond came
on the scene after the War, at a time
when people were fed up with rationing
and drab times and utility clothes and a
predominately grey colour in life. Along
comes this character who cuts right
through all that like a very hot knife
through butter, with his clothing and his
cars and his wine and his women. Bond,
you see, is a kind of present-day
survival kit. Men would like to imitate
him - or at least his success - and women
are excited by him.
PLAYBOY: Would you like to imitate him
yourself?
CONNERY: His redeeming features, I
suppose. His self-containment, his powers
of decision, his ability to carry on
through till the end and to survive.
There's so much social welfare today that
people have forgotten what it is to make
their own decisions rather than to leave
them to others. So Bond is a welcome
change.
PLAYBOY: Have you acquired any of these
traits since you began playing him?
CONNERY: I like to think I acquired them
before Bond. But I am much more
experienced as a film actor, that's for
sure. And I do play golf now, which I
never did before. I started after Dr. No,
not so much because Bond and Fleming were
golfers, but because I couldn't play
football as much as I used to, and golf
is a game you can play until you're 90.
PLAYBOY: Do you
share any of Bond's other sporting
tastes?
CONNERY: Well, I
gamble - not chemin de fer, however;
poker mostly, which I played hard when I
was touring in South Pacific. And, like
Bond, I'm fond of swimming, but on the
surface. All this stuff underwater with
bottles of oxygen strapped to one's back
in Thunderball doesn't thrill me to bits.
I have a fear of sharks and barracudas,
and I have no hesitation at all in
admitting it. It's not that I'm allergic
to them - it's just plain fear.
PLAYBOY: Do you have any expertise, as
Bond has, with guns and cars?
CONNERY: Well, I've driven competition
cars and I've had experience with guns,
because I was an armourer in the navy.
But I know nothing about espionage and
sniperscopes and that sort of thing. What
had to be seized on, in playing a special
agent like Bond, were certain immediates
such as dress, physical ability, humour,
coolness in dangerous situations...
PLAYBOY: And masterfulness with women?
CONNERY: Well, yes. I've had a certain
amount of experience in that field, I
suppose. But I've never been a womaniser,
as Fleming called Bond. Of course, one
never loses the appetite or appreciation
for a pretty girl, even though one does
not indulge it. I still like the company
of women - but then, I like the company
of men, too. They offer a different sort
of fun, of course. But I do not have a
retrospective appetite for the women in
my past.
PLAYBOY: There are critics of Fleming who
claim that Bond's appeal is based solely
on sex, sadism and snobbery; yet his
defenders, most notably Kingsley Amis,
find Bond a repository of such admirable
qualities as toughness, loyalty and
perseverance. How do you see him?
CONNERY: He is really a mixture of all
that the defenders and the attackers say
he is. When I spoke about Bond with
Fleming, he said that when the character
was conceived, Bond was a very simple,
straightforward, blunt instrument of the
police force, a functionary who would
carry out his job rather doggedly. But he
also had a lot of idiosyncrasies that
were considered snobbish - such as a
taste for special wines, et cetera. But
if you take Bond in the situations that
he is constantly involved with, you see
that it is a very hard, high, unusual
league that he plays in. Therefore he is
quite right in having all his senses
satisfied - be it sex, wine, food or
clothes - because the job, and he with
it, may terminate at any minute. But the
virtues that Amis mentions - loyalty,
honesty - are there, too. Bond doesn't
chase married women, for instance. Judged
on that level, he comes out rather well.
PLAYBOY: Do you
think he's sadistic?
CONNERY: Bond is dealing with rather
sadistic adversaries who dream up pretty
wild schemes to destroy, maim or mutilate
him. He must retaliate in kind; otherwise
it's who's kidding who.
PLAYBOY: How do you feel about roughing
up a woman, as Bond sometimes has to do?
CONNERY: I don't think there is anything
particularly wrong about hitting a woman
- although I don't recommend doing it in
the same way that you'd hit a man. An
open handed slap is justified - if all
other alternatives fail and there has
been plenty of warning. If a woman is a
bitch, or hysterical, or bloody-minded
continually, then I'd do it. I think a
man has to be slightly advanced, ahead of
the woman. I really do - by virtue of the
way a man is built, if nothing else. But
I wouldn't call myself sadistic. I think
one of the appeals that Bond has for
women, however, is that he is decisive,
cruel even. By their nature women aren't
decisive - "Shall I wear this? Shall
I wear that?" - and along comes a
man who is absolutely sure of everything
and he's a godsend. And, of course, Bond
is never in love with a girl and that
helps. He always does what he wants, and
women like that. It explains why so many
women are crazy about men who don't give
a rap for them.
PLAYBOY: Do you think it's OK to tell a
woman you love her in order to get her
into bed?
CONNERY: You can say something, but that
doesn't necessarily mean it is so. I
think before words came along there was
always physical contact and physical
satisfaction. There may be things said
afterward just as there are things said
before. But the action came first - then
the word.
PLAYBOY: Do women find you more
attractive since you started playing
Bond?
CONNERY: I suppose they do, because
they're bound to mix up the man with the
image. I get a lot of pretty strange
letters from women saying all sorts of
things. I just hand them over to my
secretary for a formal acknowledgement.
If I actually started to behave to any
woman the way Bond does, she'd run like a
jack rabbit - or send for the police.
PLAYBOY: This brings up a point raised by
many of Fleming's critics: While
conceding that Bond's adventures are
entertaining, they denounce him as a
caricature of sex appeal, and his erotic
exploits as impossibly farfetched. Do you
feel that's valid?
CONNERY: No, I don't. The main concern
for an actor or a writer is not
believability but the removal of time, as
I see it. Because I really think the only
occasions you really are enjoying
yourself, being happy, swinging, as they
say, are when you don't know what time it
is - when you're totally absorbed in a
play, a film or a party and you don't
know what time it is or how long it has
been going on; then you'll usually find
there is contentment and happiness. When
an artist can suspend time like that for
an audience, he has succeeded. It doesn't
really matter, I think, whether it is
"believable" or not. The
believability comes afterward; or it
doesn't. If you want to question it
afterward, that's up to you. But the
writer's and the actor's job is to remove
time - while you're still in the book or
the theatre. That's exactly what Fleming
achieved for millions of readers; and
that's what I've tried to achieve in the
Bond films.
PLAYBOY: Despite
your success in the role, as you probably
know, several critics thought that you
were miscast as Bond. What are your
feelings?
CONNERY: Before I got the part, I might
have agreed with them. If you had asked
any casting director who would be the
sort of man to cast as Bond, an Eton bred
Englishman, the last person into the box
would have been me, a working-class
Scotsman. And I didn't particularly have
the face for it; at 16 I looked 30,
although I was never really aware of age
until I was in my 20s. When I was acting
with Lana Turner I realised suddenly I
was 28 - and I'm even more aware of time
and age now than I was then. But today my
face is accepted as Bond, and that's how
it should be.
PLAYBOY: What was your first reaction
when you were offered the role?
CONNERY: Well, after I got over my
surprise and really began to consider it,
I didn't want to do it, because I could
see that properly made, it would have to
be the first of a series and I wasn't
sure I wanted to get involved in that and
the contract that would go with it.
Contracts choke you, and I wanted to be
free.
PLAYBOY: Why did you accept the role,
then - for the money?
CONNERY: Not entirely. I could see that,
properly made, this would be a start - a
marvellous opening. But I must admit in
all honesty that I didn't think it would
take off as it did, although it had the
ingredients of success: sex, action, and
so forth. The only thing lacking, I
thought, was humour, and luckily the
director, Terence Young, agreed with me
that it would be right to give it another
flavour, another dimension, by injecting
humour, but at the same time to play it
absolutely straight and realistically.
PLAYBOY: Did you do any research on Bond
before you made Dr. No?
CONNERY: Not really. I had read Live and
Let Die a few years before, and I'd met
Fleming a couple of times and we had
discussed Bond; but that's all.
PLAYBOY: What were your impressions of
Fleming?
CONNERY: He had great energy and
curiosity and he was a marvellous man to
talk to and have a drink with because of
the many wide interests he had. What made
him a success and caused all the
controversy was that his writing was such
good journalism. He always contrived
extraordinary situations and arranged
extravagant meetings for his characters,
and he always knew his facts. He was
always madly accurate, and this derived
from his curiosity. When he was
discussing anything, like how a truck
worked or a machine or a permutation at
bridge, there was a brain at work and an
enormous amount of research involved; it
wasn't just a lot of drivel he was
talking. That's what I admired most about
him - his energy and his curiosity.
PLAYBOY: In any
case, Dr. No turned out to be a hit, and
you found yourself under contract for a
series - exactly what you said you wanted
to avoid.
CONNERY: Yes - but it allows me to make
other films, and I have only two more
Bonds to do.
PLAYBOY: Which ones?
CONNERY: On Her Majesty's Secret Service
and possibly You Only Live Twice. They
would like to start On Her Majesty's
Secret Service in Switzerland in January,
but I'm not sure I'll be free in time and
I don't want to rush it, although they
say the snow will be at its best then.
I'm not going to rush anything anymore.
PLAYBOY: We'll be looking forward to both
films - especially since we were
fortunate enough to serialise both books
exclusively prior to their hardcover
publication. Do you think the success of
the series will continue to snowball?
CONNERY: Well, it's a healthy market and
it has been maintained because each
succeeding film has got bigger and the
gimmicks trickier. But we have to be
careful where we go next, because I think
with Thunderball we've reached the limit
as far as size and gimmicks are
concerned. In Thunderball we have Bond
underwater for about 40 percent of the
time, and there is a love scene
underwater, and attacks by aquaparas from
the sky, and two-man submarines under the
sea, and Bond is menaced by sharks.
Instead of the Aston Martin we have a
hydrofoil disguised as a cabin cruiser,
and Bond escapes with a self-propelling
jet set attached to his back. So all the
gimmicks now have been done. And they are
expected. What is needed now is a change
of course - more attention to character
and better dialogue.
PLAYBOY: As you know, there is a rival
Bond film in the works - Casino Royale,
to be made by another company - in which
someone else is expected to play Bond.
What are your feelings about that?
CONNERY: Actually, I'd find it
interesting to see what someone else does
with it. Lots of people could play him.
No reason at all why they shouldn't.
PLAYBOY: Still, you are the one
identified as Bond in the public mind.
Aren't you concerned about being
typecast?
CONNERY: Let me straighten you out on
this. The problem in interviews of this
sort is to get across the fact, without
breaking your arse, that one is not Bond,
that one was functioning reasonably well
before Bond, and that one is going to
function reasonably well after Bond.
There are a lot of things I did before
Bond - like playing the classics on stage
- that don't seem to get publicised. So
you see, this Bond image is a problem in
a way and a bit of a bore, but one has
just got to live with it.
PLAYBOY: Have you
been happy with the non-Bond films you've
made?
CONNERY: Marnie - with certain
reservations, yes. But I wasn't all that
thrilled with Woman of Straw, although
the problems were my own. I'd been
working non-stop for goodness knows how
long and trying to suggest rewrites for
it while making another film, which is
always deadly. It was an experience; but
I won't make that mistake again.
PLAYBOY: How about The Hill? Are you
pleased with your performance in it?
CONNERY: That's the first time, truly,
since the Bond films that I've had any
time to prepare, to get all the ins and
outs of what I was going to do worked out
with the director and producer in
advance, to find out if we were all on
the same track. Then we went off like
Gang Busters and shot the film under
time, and it was exciting all the way
down the line. Even before being shown,
The Hill has succeeded for me, because I
was concerned and fully involved in the
making of it. The next stage is how it is
exploited and received, and that I have
absolutely no control over; by the time
The Hill is out, I shall be involved in
Thunderball. You get detached; a film is
like a young bird that has flown from its
nest; once out, it's up to the bird to
fly around or to fall on its arse. When
Woman of Straw was shot down, I wasn't
entirely surprised. But whatever happens
to The Hill, it will not detract from
what I think about it.
PLAYBOY: Do you think your box-office
drawing power as Bond had anything to do
with your getting the lead in The Hill?
CONNERY: It had everything to do with it,
of course. As a matter of fact, it might
not have been made at all except for
Bond. It's a marvellous movie with lots
of good actors in it, but it's the sort
of film that might have been considered a
non-commercial art-house property without
my name on it. This gave the producers
financial freedom, a rein to make it.
Thanks to Bond, I find myself now in a
bracket with just a few other actors and
actresses who, if they put their names to
a contract, it means the finances will
come in.
PLAYBOY: Speaking of finances, in two
years you've become one of the
highest-paid stars in the world. As a
working man's son, are you relishing all
this new found affluence?
CONNERY: Certainly. I want all I can get.
I think I'm entitled to it. I have no
false modesty about it. I don't believe
in this stuff about starving in a garret
or being satisfied with artistic
appreciation alone. But that doesn't mean
that I will do anything just for money. I
gave up a part in El Cid to act for 25
pounds a week and no living expenses in a
Pirandello play at Oxford. But as far as
this series is concerned, after the next
two, the only condition for making any
more would be one million dollars plus a
percentage of the gross.
PLAYBOY: What were you paid for Dr. No?
CONNERY: Six thousand pounds [$16,800].
PLAYBOY: We're told you're now getting
half a million dollars per picture.
CONNERY: I never ask anybody what they
earn and I don't tell anybody what I
earn.
PLAYBOY: But that figure of half a
million wouldn't be too far off the mark?
CONNERY: No, not really.
PLAYBOY: Despite
this lofty income, you're said to be
rather tight with your money. True or
false?
CONNERY: I'm not stingy, but I'm careful
with it. I don't throw my money around,
because money gives you power and freedom
to operate as you want. I have respect
for its value, because I know how hard it
is to earn and to keep. I come from a
background where there was little money
and we had to be content with what there
was. One doesn't forget a past like that.
PLAYBOY: How do you spend your new found
wealth?
CONNERY: Well, I bought a second hand
Jaguar, and I bought the house I now live
in, with about an acre of land; but I
don't invest in land, and I don't have a
lot of servants - just a secretary and a
nanny for the children. Old habits die
hard. Even today, when I have a big meal
in a restaurant, I'm still conscious that
the money I'm spending is equal to my
dad's wages for a week. I just can't get
over that, even though I sign the bill
and don't actually pay in cash. But I
still prefer the feel of real money to a
cheque book. And I'm still the sort of
fellow who hates to see a light left on
in a room when no one is there.
PLAYBOY: Do you have an extensive
wardrobe?
CONNERY: I think I've got seven or eight
suits now; I took them all from the films
- plus a couple I bought awhile ago in a
moment of weakness. Something came over
me and I went out one day and spent 300
pounds [$840] on two suits.
PLAYBOY: Did you ever imagine, when you
were hoofing in the chorus line of South
Pacific in London, that you'd someday be
able to buy a $400 suit?
CONNERY: Never - but I was never in any
sort of despondence or living like a
malnutritional artist in a basement. I
knew I'd make it sooner or later, one way
or another. I think every actor has the
seed of knowing he will be successful.
PLAYBOY: At one time you considered
becoming a professional football player
instead of an actor. What decided you
against it?
CONNERY: Mainly because I was already in
South Pacific when I got this offer to
sign up as a pro footballer. I really
wanted to accept, because I'd always
loved the game. But I stopped to assess
it, and I asked myself, well, what's the
length of a footballer's career? When a
top-class player is 30 he's over the
hill. So I decided to become an actor
instead, because I wanted something that
would last, and because it was fun. I'd
no experience whatever and hadn't even
been on a stage before, but it turned out
to be one of my more intelligent moves.
PLAYBOY: Yet the big
break with Bond didn't come for nine
years, until you were 31. Were you
beginning to wonder whether you'd made
the wrong choice?
CONNERY: No, I never doubted that the
break would come eventually. I was quite
late in deciding to become an actor, you
see - around 22 - and most people by that
time have already had a few years at
their job, or contemplating it. So I
didn't expect it soon. Everything I've
done has had to be accomplished in my own
cycle, my own time, on my own behalf, and
with my own sweat.
PLAYBOY: How did you become so
self-reliant?
CONNERY: My background was harsh. One's
parents left one free to make one's own
way. When I was nine my mother caught me
smoking and she said, "Don't let
your father find out, because if he does
he'll beat you so hard he'll break your
bottom." From the time I started
working at 13, I always paid my share of
the rent, and the attitude at home was
the prevalent one in Scotland - you make
your own bed and so you have to lie on
it. I didn't ask for advice and I didn't
get it. I had to make it on my own or not
at all.
PLAYBOY: Would you have preferred it
otherwise?
CONNERY: Absolutely not. This sort of
motivation is the great thing that's
lacking in present-day society.
Everything is so smooth-running, so
attainable, that one is deprived of
initiative, lured into a false sense of
security. In the days before the War,
with high unemployment, many people
simply put in an appearance every morning
at the factory although they knew there
was no chance of work. Sheep-like, they
felt they just had to go. Today
everything's handed to them on a platter:
They know they can get work and enough
food, and socialised medicine has taken
the worry out of being ill. If there is a
malnutrition of any kind in this country
- and I think there is - it's
self-inflicted. The only competition
you'll find today is the conflict between
those few who try to correct a wrong, and
the majority who hope it will just cure
itself in the end.
PLAYBOY: We take it you number yourself
among the former group.
CONNERY: I like to think so.
PLAYBOY: According to your critics, this
spirit of competition, in your case,
sometimes takes the form of verbal and
physical conflict. They say you have a
penchant for abusive arguments and even
fistfights with those who take exception
to your views.
CONNERY: Not really. I'm not a violent
man, and I don't go in for fighting.
PLAYBOY: How about
your reputation for rudeness and
belligerence?
CONNERY: I know they say that, but what
am I supposed to do about it? To some
people I am rude and aggressive, but I
think they provoke about 50 percent of it
by their attitude to me. I like getting
along with people, but I don't believe in
bending over backward to be nice, just to
show they're wrong about me, or in hiring
a press agent to write heart-searching
stories about how different I am from the
boor they believe me to be. I cannot go
round with a welcome mat hanging round my
neck.
PLAYBOY: Some publicity men claim that
during the making of a film you tend to
be short-tempered and highhanded.
CONNERY: Look, during my working day I'll
give my full pound of flesh - to the
film. The interviews, publicity,
exploitation and what have you, have to
come second, because otherwise what
really counts suffers. But one gets
lumbered. In the middle of a big sequence
of Goldfinger, the publicity man brought
on a French magazine lady and left me
with her. First of all, she asked what
the film was called. I told her. Then
what part was I playing. I told her. Then
she asked who was starring opposite me. I
said a very famous German actor, Gert
Frobe. "Well, I've never heard of
her," she said, and with that I just
blew up and walked off the set; so I
suppose I'm considered very rude by that
person. Well, I consider her
disrespectful and incompetent, and both
are definite sins. If someone treats me
rudely or dishonestly, you see, I repay
them an eye for an eye. But given the
chance, I try to treat everyone, man or
woman, as I would like to be treated
myself.
PLAYBOY: And how is that?
CONNERY: Honestly, openly and simply. But
without being too Machiavellian about it,
you have to acknowledge that there is no
future in turning the other cheek if
somebody does the dirty on you and sends
you down the river after you've been
straight with them. You can't be straight
with them next time; you have to do
something about it.
PLAYBOY: What?
CONNERY: Straighten them out.
PLAYBOY: How?
CONNERY: If possible, by argument - even
at the expense of being thought rude and
belligerent.
PLAYBOY: You complained once that too
much attention was given to personal
popularity - that life wasn't just one
long popularity contest. Was that a
rationalisation for being generally
disliked?
CONNERY: Ever since the introduction of
psychoanalysis there have been to many
terms to excuse behaviour and phrases
that can be flipped off to explain
everything. People who are aware of the
dangers of this, who see through the
phrases, as they see through the
pomposity and hypocrisy around them, are
obviously not going to win any popularity
polls. All those - whether they be
actors, writers, painters or social
reformers - who don't conform to the
normal, accepted pattern of society
always come in for a bit of a beating.
PLAYBOY: What's your
reaction when you hear comments such as
"Connery may be fine as Bond, but
he's not really much of an actor apart
from that"?
CONNERY: I haven't met anyone who
actually said that to me, because it
would certainly not be a very bright
thing to do, and if they did say it to
me, I'd - you know - straighten them out.
But they do tend to sort of judge me only
on Bond.
PLAYBOY: They?
CONNERY: Moviegoers - well, perhaps not
in Britain, because people here can
follow everything that one does, because
the film studios, TV and theatre are all
in one town, and the press is national.
PLAYBOY: Is the fan mail you get from
America primarily about Bond?
CONNERY: Yes, but I got some nice letters
also about Marnie, the Hitchcock film,
where I played an American. I think one
of the reasons they accept me over there
is that most of the younger British actor
today, like Finney and O'Toole and me,
are more organic, down-to-earth actors
than previous generations. In America and
Canada and places like that, where they
are still breaking through, they
appreciate and accept organic acting more
readily and enthusiastically. In America
there is much more feel for realism than
in Europe, where there is still a
conception of an actor as being somehow
divorced from real life, and in Britain,
where acting is still often associated
more with being statuesque and striking
poses and declaiming with lyrical voices.
I'm more interested in things that appeal
to me and what I think I have a contact
with. But I can still appreciate
classical acting - like Olivier's
Othello.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel you have any
limitations as an actor?
CONNERY: I have never thought that way.
PLAYBOY: Haven't you any personal or
professional doubts at all about
yourself?
CONNERY: None to speak of. I harbour a
normal allotment of transient worries, of
course. If they're professional, I
discuss them with the director; if
they're personal, I may take them home to
Diane, but more often, I just keep them
bottled up inside me and don't tell
anyone about them. Or I may listen to
advice from friends, but after sifting
it, I usually do what I thought was right
in the first place.
PLAYBOY: Are you
afraid of anything?
CONNERY: Besides sharks and barracudas,
you mean?
PLAYBOY: Yes.
CONNERY: Being in an absolutely
vulnerable position and not being able to
do anything about it. Like you read in
the War-crime trials in Germany about
troops of Jews filing into the gas
chambers and being utterly helpless to do
anything about it. Then you are really
vulnerable. Even with the gladiators in
Rome there was a chance you could pull it
off, but in Germany there was just a
horrific total vulnerability. I don't
know how I would react to that.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel vulnerable
professionally?
CONNERY: Not really. If things weren't
coming my way, I'd move on.
PLAYBOY: To what?
CONNERY: Who can say? Wherever my feet
led me.
PLAYBOY: Have you always been this way?
CONNERY: It's a national characteristic
of the Scots; they're all over the world
- in shipbuilding, engineering, shipping,
acting, journalism. Coming out of my own
rather grim and grey environment,
everything had a sense of newness and
discovery about it. Yet my brother is
still a plasterer in Edinburgh, and all
the people I went to school with are
still doing the same jobs.
PLAYBOY: Do you still have this
wanderlust?
CONNERY: Very much so. With their
far-flung locations, the Bond films help
to satiate it. But to give you an idea
how great the hunger is, I was in bed
with the flu on a Friday morning in
London about three years ago and I got a
telephone call and I was chatting away
for about 20 minutes before I realised it
was Toronto on the line. My first thought
was, "My God, I hope he hasn't
reversed the charges!" Then he said,
"We're doing Macbeth on Monday.
Would you like to play it? I said,
"What, this Monday?" and he
said, "Yes, get a plane and come
over. It's a special cultural thing on TV
and there's not a lot of money in
it" - which seems always the actors'
bait. I was to get $500 or so for it. So
I said, "Give me an apartment and
enough money to live on while I'm there
so I don't have to steal food," and
he said all right and would I get the
plane that afternoon. And there I was, in
bed at 11:30 in the morning with flu and
I jumped up and said to myself,
"Christ - what do I do first?"
The first thing was to read the play. So
I sat down and read it and suddenly
realised what I'd bitten off. It was
monumental. I re-read it over and over
all the way to Canada and somehow I was
ready to go on Monday morning.
PLAYBOY: Are you
usually that fast?
CONNERY: Not really, no. I'm impatient by
nature and I'm always trying to find the
right way much too soon - cutting into it
and trying to get the details right and
missing the main points of the play.
PLAYBOY: Do you find
it less demanding to act for the screen?
CONNERY: In many
ways, yes; I've had probably greater
success at it with less effort. It's much
easier, of course, for an actor to play
the same part - Bond - four times than to
create a new part each time.
PLAYBOY: When you're
not working - either in a film or a play
- how do you spend your time?
CONNERY: Well, I
read a great deal. Between jobs I've read
the whole of Shakespeare and Ibsen and
Pirandello and even Proust, which seemed
to go on forever; 12 volumes are just too
much. At the moment I'm reading Herzog.
And I've been going to the theatre quite
a lot lately. But I like to do physical
things, too: I still play football; I
play a great deal of golf, and I like to
do things with my hands like lifting bar
bells and carrying my own clubs on the
golf course, which I always do.
PLAYBOY: Didn't you
say once that golf could only be a Scots
invention, for hitting a small ball over
an open field would drive an ordinary man
mad?
CONNERY: I did,
because it's very true, and very
characteristic of the Scots. It's a
loner's game. I think it was the late Sir
Winston Churchill who said it's a rather
exciting game but they made such bloody
awful tools to do it with.
PLAYBOY: Do you find
the game relaxing or taxing?
CONNERY: I find it
terribly frustrating, but I'm really
getting to the best stage of my golf game
now: I'm really getting near. Five or six
times I've broken 80 and at last I know
what I'm doing and I get a tremendous
sense of achievement and enjoyment out of
it. I think it is one of the most
important games in the world. I don't
think I'd go quite round the bend without
it, as someone predicted I would - but I
want to play it every day I can. As a
matter of fact, I'd like to have a go at
the pro circuit. It's a bit late to try
it now, but I'd like to just for the hell
of it. Of course, I haven't the time for
it.
PLAYBOY: If your
time were entirely your own, how else
would you spend it?
CONNERY: Writing a
bit, I think - short stories and poetry.
PLAYBOY: Have you
ever done any before?
CONNERY: Quite a
lot, actually. Most of the stuff I've
done was written when I was on tour with
South Pacific when I first decided to be
an actor - just ideas and images and how
one felt and what impressed one. They
were usually written late at night, and
in the light of day they seemed a bit
alarming. I destroyed quite a lot of it.
Very few people have read what's left;
but it's considered pretty fair stuff.
PLAYBOY: Do you have
any other extracurricular talents?
CONNERY: Well, I'm
fairly handy around the house. When I was
having my present home altered before
moving in two winters ago, the workmen
tried to flannel me by saying that they
couldn't do this or that job because of
the weather. They didn't know that I've
worked in building - with plasterers and
carpenters and electricians - and I know
that line of work pretty well. So I drew
up a list of the things I knew could be
done each day, and I supervised them like
a foreman to see that they got it done.
PLAYBOY: Are you a
jack of any other trades?
CONNERY: Well, I can
harness horses and herd them. And I can
cook. I like cooking for a lot of people
or just two - Diane and myself. But not
just for six or seven.
PLAYBOY: Do you have
any speciality?
CONNERY: Yes -
goulash á la Connery. Would you like the
recipe?
PLAYBOY: All right.
CONNERY: Well, for
three or four people with some left over,
I take a pound of the best beef and do it
in olive oil and garlic for half an hour
in a pot with a lid on it, so that all
the juice is drained away from it, and
while that's going on I finely chop
onions and carrots and have fresh
tomatoes and tinned tomatoes all ready.
Then I fry the carrots and the onions in
butter, and once the steak has been
cooking for about half an hour in the
pot, I take it out and dice it up into
squares - one- or two-inch squares - and
then roll it in flour, salt, pepper and
seasoning, and line the bottom of the
bowl or stone dish. Then I cover all the
meat with the onions and the carrots and
the tomato - fresh and tinned - and the
oil that's left over in the juice that's
been taken from the meat I pour over the
top. I then add a tube of Italian tomato
purée, and top it all off with either
good stock or boiled water, and bake it
in the oven for three hours and medium
heat. It's superb.
PLAYBOY: Where did
you learn all this?
CONNERY: In boy
service in the navy, when I was 16; we
used to have to do our own cooking. I
also cooked for myself when I kept my own
flat in London. I used to make a big dish
of soup that would last me five or six
days, so when I came in at night I could
always take some and heat it up. It
wasn't very good, but it was cheap and
plentiful.
PLAYBOY: Do you have
to watch your weight?
CONNERY: I don't
really keep any check on it. I know what
I am now, because we were doing a scene
in a health farm for Thunderball and
there were weights and scales around. I'm
14 stone, 5 pounds [201 pounds]. It seems
to stay pretty constant.
PLAYBOY: Do you
drink?
CONNERY: Beer at
lunch if I'm filming, because wine makes
you doze off in the afternoon. But I like
good wine and champagne - doesn't
everyone? But I am not a connoisseur like
Bond.
PLAYBOY: How do you
keep in shape?
CONNERY: Football,
golf and swimming, if possible. My
metabolic system seems to burn up what I
don't need, so I don't have any sort of
problem.
PLAYBOY: Do you
practice judo or karate?
CONNERY: No, but if
I'm shown a move or a routine I can
usually follow it.
PLAYBOY: Harold
Sakata, who played Goldfinger's
manservant Oddjob, seemed to be a
tremendously powerful man. Was he as
strong as he looked?
CONNERY:
Tremendously so. He knows karate and judo
and wrestling and weight lifting. With it
all, though, he is a very sweet man, very
gentle.
PLAYBOY: Did you use
a double in your fight with him?
CONNERY: No. There
are doubles, but I usually do my own
stunts - and all the fight sequences,
except for that fall on one's back on the
rails in Russia. Bob Shaw [who played the
blond Spectre assassin] and I did most of
that scene ourselves.
PLAYBOY: Was
Thunderball an equally strenuous picture
to make? In a recent Look article, you
were quoted as saying that you suffered
everything from "the trots to
leprosy" during the filming.
CONNERY: They've got
that wrong. It wasn't on Thunderball in
the Bahamas, but during The Hill in
Spain, where Spanish tummy and the heat
combined to lay me out.
PLAYBOY: At this
point in your career, as you pause
between Thunderball and On Her Majesty's
Secret Service, do you feel that the Bond
boom, apart from making you rich and
famous, has changed you as a man or as an
actor in any fundamental way?
CONNERY: No, I'm
what I always have been: a Scot, a bit
introspective; I don't tell lies and I
prefer straight dealing. I don't lose my
temper often, except at incompetence - my
own or others'. Or when I play golf
badly. But I never lose my temper at
work; if I have a row there I have a head
like ice. I have learned to rely on
myself - and to keep my own counsel -
since I started earning at 13. Like all
Celts, I have my moods, and I'm not
particularly generous with them. I rather
like to keep them to myself; but if
people want to infringe on a mood they
are welcome to any part of it. I suppose
you could say I am more introvert than
extrovert. The extrovert side is in my
work.
PLAYBOY: As a non
extrovert, does it make you uncomfortable
to be the object of so much world-wide
press coverage and public adulation?
CONNERY: To be quite
honest, yes. I find that fame tends to
turn one from an actor and a human being
into a piece of merchandise, a public
institution. Well, I don't intend to
undergo that metamorphosis. This is why I
fight so tenaciously to protect my
privacy, to keep interviews like this one
to an absolute minimum, to fend off
prying photographers who want to follow
me around and publicise my every step and
breath. The absolute sanctum sanctorum is
my home, which is and will continue to be
only for me, my wife, my family and my
friends. I do not and shall not have
business meetings there or acquaintances
or journalists. When I work, I work my
full stint, but I must insist that my
private life remain my own. I don't think
that's too much to ask.
PLAYBOY: One last
question: Since you seem to consider
stardom, at best, a mixed blessing, how
long do you think you'll want to remain
in movies - and in the public eye?
CONNERY: I have no
idea how I'll feel or what I'll be like
or what I'll be doing even five years
from now. I'm eternally concerned with
the present. I've been working my arse
into the ground for 21 years and I'm just
coming up for air now. I find there are
two sorts of people in the world: those
who live under a shell and just wait for
their pensions, and those who move around
and keep their eyes open. I have always
moved around and kept my eyes open - and
been prepared to raise my middle finger
at the world. I always will.
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