“With the glorious exceptions of Brando and Olivier, there’s no screen actor I’d rather watch than Sean Connery. His vitality may make him the most richly masculine of all English-speaking actors; that thick, rumbling Scotsman’s voice of his actually transforms English, muffles the clipped edges and humanizes the language.
“Connery looks absolutely confident in himself as a man. Women want to meet him, and men want to be him.” – Pauline Kael
“Nonprofessionals just didn’t realize what superb high-comedy acting that Bond role was. It was like what they used to say about Cary Grant. ‘Oh,’ they’d say, ‘he’s just got charm.’ Well, first of all, charm is actually not all that easy a quality to come by. And what they overlooked in both Cary Grant and Sean was their enormous skill.” – Sidney Lumet
“There are only seven genuine movie stars in the world today, and Sean is one of them.” – Steven Spielberg
When Sean Connery turned 90 I realized there was a good chance that someday soon I would wake to see his obituary. The news is neither shocking nor surprising, just sad. Not for Connery, who lived a terrific life, going from the slums of Edinburgh to the top of the world, becoming one of the greatest icons of modern cinema, but for us. He was larger than life, so how could he possibly die? To lose a man who embodied legends feels wrong, almost impossible.
The producers of the Bond movies were extraordinarily lucky—the man they cast was a natural movie star. Not merely a good actor or camera subject, but an actor with the charisma and presence displayed by a hero of history and legend. Who else could so convincingly play Agamemnon, Robin Hood, King Arthur, Hotspur, Macbeth, and Richard the Lionheart? Who else could seem so at home in those roles? The man with the capacity to embody these characters was fated to turn James Bond into a modern-day mythic hero. And when Connery embodied Bond he seared the character into the world’s consciousness. Millions responded to his indisputable charisma, animal magnetism, and suave sense of irony and play. He created the role and defined it. For all of these reasons, it is impossible to imagine another actor surpassing him as Bond. Such an actor need to be what Connery was: an actor capable of creating legends onscreen, an icon in the same line as the larger-than-life screen gods–Bogart, Cooper, Grant, and Gable.
I would rather celebrate than mourn a man who enjoyed such a brilliant career. Like many great stars he made several duds, but all are compensated for by his triumphs. I wish he had gone out with a better film than the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (I would have loved to see him as King Lear) or had appeared in few more films, but I can’t blame him for being fed up with modern Hollywood, which he said was run by idiots.
Though many remember him for his roles in blockbusters of the 80s and 90s, Connery did his greatest work in the 1970s, in the movies where he fully emerged from Bond’s shadow. The greatest evidence of Connery’s acting prowess is The Offence (1973), with his most challenging and lest glamorous role, a grubby, burnt-out small-town detective. Many actors shrink and grow drab in such down-to-earth, exhausting parts, but Connery stayed riveting.
To witness the greatest display of Connery’s megawatt stature, his ability to embody legendary characters, watch his “mythic trilogy” of The Wind and the Lion (1975), Man Who Would Be King (1975), and Robin and Marian (1976). All of the characters in these films are flawed, flesh and blood men; Connery’s earthiness never lets us forget this. But these men also attain a form of mythic greatness, conveyed by Connery’s inner strength and command of the screen.
I don’t know what Sean Connery was like in private life, but he had unrivaled charisma onscreen. Charisma is ultimately a form of self-confidence arising from a person’s sense of his own merit. There is nothing self-conscious or forced in this person’s acceptance of himself and his power. He is at home with the best of himself and thus able to express his finest qualities without strain or pretense. Many of us envy such people, so when Connery played James Bond he became the great fantasy hero of his age. To have such natural charisma and self-confidence made him the eternal James Bond. And yet after Bond this self-acceptance and confidence allowed him to escape sleek modern fantasy and play legends and mythic archetypes that were also deeply human. No other actor of our time managed this. Sean Connery takes his greatness to the grave.