Sean Connery, the actor who originally played the role of British secret agent James Bond 007, and later outgrew that influence to star in multiple roles, passed away on Saturday aged 90.
Connery rocketed to fame after Ian Fleming, the novelist who created the James Bond character, initially reluctantly and then fully agreed on the tall Scottish actor performance in Dr. No.
From then on, Connery played several Bond roles but realized that he had to outgrow that role and went on to show his versatile talent. He won an Oscar and three Golden Globes in addition to several honors in Britain and the United States.
But fans around the world still identify him as the original player of the British Secret Agent role as James Bond.
A photo of Sean Connery with members of the United States Air Force Reserve’s Pipe and Drum Band in Washington, DC. The occasion was Tartan Day, 2004. {{PD-USGov}} Image in Public Domain
Some of his most successful movies include Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, The Man Who Would Be King, The Name of the Rose, A Bridge Too Far, Indian Jones and the Last Crusade, Dragon Heart, and The Rock.
Film fans and critics in the media paid tributes to Connery as the news of his passing spread across social media platforms and the electronic media.
Comparisons inevitably rose between Connery and Roger Moore, who also took the Bond role to generations of fans in the 1970s and the 1980s with a series of breathtaking films.
Radio Times, a British magazine, reported Saturday that Connery had been voted as the best James Bond actor in a survey of movie lovers.
The New York Times started its piece on Connery which summed up the actor’s journey.
“Sean Connery, the irascible Scot from the slums of Edinburgh who found international fame as Hollywood’s original James Bond, dismayed his fans by walking away from the Bond franchise and went on to have a long and fruitful career as a respected actor and an always bankable star, died on Saturday in Nassau, the Bahamas,” the Times piece said in its opening paragraph.
Now with both Connery and Moore gone, an era of suspenseful James Bond actors, transitions into a new phase, and it would not be easy for new actors to step up to the plate.
