Sean Connery

Actors

Sir Thomas Sean Connery CBE (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer. He received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and three Golden Globes. He also received honorary awards such as the Cecil B. DeMille Award In 1987, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1998, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999. He was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, was made a knight by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to drama in 2000.

Connery made his uncredited debut as an extra in Herbert Wilcox’s Lilacs in the Spring (1954), with Anna Neagle, Errol Flynn, David Farrar, and Kathleen Harrison. He made his credited film debut with a minor role in Montgomery Tully’s No Road Back (1957), with Skip Homeier, Paul Carpenter, Patricia Dainton, Norman Wooland, Margaret Rawlings, Eleanor Summerfield, and Alfie Bass. Other early films include Cy Endfield’s Hell Drivers (1957), with Stanley Baker, Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins, and Patrick McGoohan; Terence Young’s Action of the Tiger (1957), with Van Johnson, Martine Carol, Herbert Lom, and Gustavo Rojo; Gerald Thomas’s Time Lock (1957), with Robert Beatty, Lee Patterson, Betty McDowall, and Vincent Winter.

Connery’s first major role was in Lewis Allen’s Another Time, Another Place (1958), with Lana Turner, Barry Sullivan, and Glynis Johns. Other significant films during this period include Robert Stevenson’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), with Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, Jimmy O’Dea, Kieron Moore, Estelle Winwood, and Walter Fitzgerald; John Guillermin’s Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (1959), with Gordon Scott, Anthony Quayle, Sara Shane, Niall MacGinnis, and Scilla Gabel; Cyril Frankel’s On the Fiddle (1961), with Alfred Lynch, Cecil Parker, Stanley Holloway, Eric Barker, Mike Sarne, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Kathleen Harrison, Victor Maddern, and John Le Mesurier; John Lemont’s The Frightened City (1961), with Herbert Lom, John Gregson, Alfred Marks, and Yvonne Romain; and the epic war ensemble The Longest Day (1962), with John Wayne, Kenneth More, Richard Todd, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Steve Forrest, Henry Fonda, Red Buttons, Peter Lawford, Eddie Albert, Jeffrey Hunter, Stuart Whitman, Tom Tryon, Rod Steiger, Leo Genn, Gert Fröbe, Irina Demick, Bourvil, Curd Jürgens, George Segal, Robert Wagner, Paul Anka, Sal Mineo, and Arletty.

Connery gained worldwide fame as the first actor to portray British secret agent James Bond on film in seven entries: Dr. No (1962), with Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman, Jack Lord, Anthony Dawson, Zena Marshall, John Kitzmiller, Eunice Gayson, and Bernard Lee; From Russia with Love (1963), with Pedro Armendáriz, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, Lee, Daniela Bianchi, and Desmond Llewelyn; Goldfinger (1964), with Honor Blackman, Gert Fröbe, Shirley Eaton, Tania Mallet, and Harold Sakata; Thunderball (1965), with Claudine Auger, Adolfo Celi, Luciana Paluzzi, Rik Van Nutter, and Guy Doleman; You Only Live Twice (1967), with Tetsurō Tamba, Akiko Wakabayashi, Mie Hama, Donald Pleasence, Teru Shimada, and Karin Dor; Diamonds Are Forever (1971), with Jill St. John, Charles Gray, Lana Wood, Jimmy Dean, Bruce Cabot; and Never Say Never Again (1983), with Klaus Maria Brandauer, Max von Sydow, Barbara Carrera, Kim Basinger, Bernie Casey, Alec McCowen, and Edward Fox.

Other notable films in the 1960s include (1957), Alfred Hitchcock‘s Marnie (1964),with Tippi Heston, Diane Baker, and Martin Gabel; Basil Dearden’s Woman of Straw (1964), with Gina Lollobrigida and Ralph Richardson; Sidney Lumet’s The Hull (1965), with Harry Andrews, Ian Bannen, Ossie Davis, Ian Hendry, Alfred Lynch, Roy Kinnear, and Michael Redgrave; Irvin Kershner‘s A Fine Madness (1966), with Joanne Woodward, Jean Seberg, Patrick O’Neal, Colleen Dewhurst, Clive Revill, Werner Peters, John Fiedler, Kay Medford, Jackie Coogan, Zohra Lampert, Sorrell Booke, and Sue Ane Langdon; Edward Dmytryk’s Shalako (1968), with Brigitte Bardot, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Peter van Eyck, Blackman, Woody Strode, Eric Sykes, Alexander Knox, and Valerie French; and Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Red Tent (1969), with Claudia Cardinale, Hardy Krüger, Peter Finch, Massimo Girotti, Luigi Vannucchi, Eduard Martsevich, and Mario Adorf.

Films in the early 1970s include Martin Ritt‘s The Molly Maguires (1970), with Richard Harris, Samantha Eggar, and Frank Finlay; Lumet’s The Anderson Tapes (197), with Dyan Cannon, Martin Balsam and Alan King; The Offence (1972), with Trevor Howard, Vivien Merchant, and, Ian Bannen; John Boorman‘s Zardoz (1974), with Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kestelman, Niall Buggy, and John Anderton; Murder on the Orient Express (1974), with Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael York, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Perkins, and Wendy Hiller; and Ransom (1974), with Ian McAhane.

Films in the mid to late 1970s include John Milius’s The Wind and the Lion (1975), with Candice Bergen, Brian Keith, John Huston, and Geoffrey Lewis; Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King (1975), with Michael Caine, Saeed Jaffrey, and Christopher Plummer; Richard Lester‘s Robin and Marian (1976), with Audrey Hepburn, Shaw, Nicol Williamson, Denholm Elliott, Ronnie Barker, Kenneth Haigh, Ian Holm, and Richard Harris; Richard C. Sarafian’s The Next Man (1976), with Cornelia Sharpe, Albert Paulsen, Adolfo Celi, Marco St. John, Ted Beniades, and Charles Cioffi; Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far (1977), with Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Caine, Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Krüger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O’Neal, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell, and Liv Ullmann; Michael Crichton’s The First Great Train Robbery (1979), with Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down; Ronald Neame‘s Meteor (1979), with Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Joseph Campanella, Richard Dysart, and Fonda; and Cuba (1979), with Brooke Adams, Jack Weston, Hector Elizondo, Elliott, Martin Balsam, Chris Sarandon, Alejandro Rey, and Lonette McKee.

Films in the early 1980s include Peter Hyams’s Outland (1981), with Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen, James B. Sikking, and Kika Markham; Terry Gilliam‘s Time Bandits (1981), with John Cleese, Shelley Duvall, Ralph Richardson, Katherine Helmond, Holm, Michael Palin, Peter Vaughan, and David Warner; Fred Zinnermann’s Five Days One Summer (1982), with Betsy Brantley, Lambert Wilson, Gérard Buhr, Isabel Dean, Jennifer Hilary, Anna Massey, and Sheila Reid; Richard Brooks’s Wrong Is Right (1982), with Robert Conrad, George Grizzard, Hardy Krüger, Ron Moody, Leslie Nielsen, Katharine Ross, John Saxon, Henry Silva, G.D. Spradlin, Robert Webber, and Rosalind Cash; and Stephen Weeks’s Sword of the Valiant (1984), with Miles O’Keeffe, Trevor Howard, Lila Kedrova, Cyrielle Clair, Leigh Lawson, and Peter Cushing.

Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Brian De Palma‘s The Untouchables (1987), with Kevin Costner, Charles Martin Smith, Andy García, Robert De Niro, Billy Drago, and Patricia Clarkson. Other films in the late 1980s include Russell Mulcahy’s Highlander (1986), with Christopher Lambert, Roxanne Heart, and Clancy Brown; Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose (1986), with F. Murray Abraham, Feodor Chaliapin Jr., William Hickey, Michael Lonsdale, Ron Perlman, Christian Slater, and Valentina Vargas; The Presidio (1988), with Mark Harmon, Meg Ryan, and Jack Warden; Steven Spielberg‘s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), with Harrison Ford, Alison Doody, Elliott, Julian Glover, River Phoenix, and John Rhys-Davies; and Family Business (1989), with Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick.

Films in the early 1990s include John McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October (1990), with Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, Sam Neill, Joss Ackland, Tim Curry, and Stellan Skarsgård; Fred Schepisi’s The Russia House (1990), with Michelle Pfeiffer, Roy Scheider, James Fox, John Mahoney, Klaus Maria Brandauer, J.T. Walsh, and Ken Russell; Highlander II: The Quickening (1991), with Lambert, Virginia Madsen, Michael Ironside, John C. McGinley, and Allan Rich; an uncredited cameo in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), with Costner, Morgan Freeman, Slater, Alan Rickman, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio; Geraldine McEwan, Michael McShane, Michael Wincott, and Brian Blessed; Medicine Man (1992), with Lorraine Bracco; Philip Kaufman’s Rising Sun (1993), with Wesley Snipes, Harvey Keitel, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Kevin Anderson, Mako, Tia Carrere, Ray Wise, and Shaw; and Bruce Beresford’s A Good Man in Africa (1994), with Colin Friels, Joanne Whalley, John Lithgow, Louis Gossett Jr., and Diana Rigg.

Films in the mid to late 1990s include Arne Glimcher’s Just Cause (1995), with Laurence Fishburne, Kate Capshaw, Blair Underwood, Ruby Dee, Ed Harris, Scarlett Johansson, Ned Beatty, and Hope Lange; Jerry Zucker’s First Knight (1995), with Richard Gere, Julia Ormond, Ben Cross, Liam Cunningham, and John Gielgud; a voice role in Dragonheart (1996), with Dennis Quaid, David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite, Dina Meyer, Jason Isaacs, and Julie Christie; The Rock (1996), with Nicolas Cage, Harris, Michael Biehn, and William Forsythe; Jeremiah Checkik’s The Avengers (1998), with Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Jim Broadbent, Fiona Shaw, and Eddie Izzard; Playing by Heart (1998), with Gillian Anderson, Ellen Burstyn, Anthony Edwards, Angelina Jolie, Jay Mohr, Ryan Phillippe, Quaid, Gena Rowlands, Jon Stewart, and Madeleine Stowe; and John Amiel’s Entrapment (1999), with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Will Patton, Ving Rhames, and Maury Chaykin.

His last films include Gus Van Sant‘s Finding Forrester (2000), with Rob Brown, Anna Paquin, Abraham, Michael Pitt, Glenn Fitzgerald, April Grace, Busta Rhymes, and Charles Bernstein; The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), with Naseeruddin Shah, Peta Wilson, Tony Curran, Stuart Townsend, Shane West, Jason Flemyng, and Richard Roxburgh; and a voice role in Sir Billi (2012), with Alan Cumming, Patrick Doyle, Kieron Elliott, Greg Hemphill, Ford Kiernan, Miriam Margolyes, and Amy Sacco. In 2004, a poll in the UK Sunday Herald recognised Connery as “The Greatest Living Scot” and a 2011 EuroMillions survey named him “Scotland’s Greatest Living National Treasure”. He was voted by People magazine as the “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1989 and the “Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. Connery shares the record for the most portrayals as James Bond with Roger Moore (with seven apiece). In June 1965, Time magazine observed “James Bond has developed into the biggest mass-cult hero of the decade.”

Each review will be linked to the title below.

(*seen originally in theaters)

(**seen rereleased in theaters)

  • Lilacs in the Spring (1954) – directed by Herbert Wilcox – uncredited
  • No Road Back (1957) – directed by Montgomery Tully
  • Hell Drivers (1957) – directed by Cy Endfield
  • Action of the Tiger (1957) – directed by Terence Young
  • Time Lock (1957) – directed by Gerald Thomas
  • Another Time, Another Place (1958) – directed by Lewis Allen
  • Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959) – directed by Robert Stevenson
  • Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (1959) – directed by John Guillermin
  • On the Fiddle (1961) – directed by Cyril Frankel
  • The Frightened City (1961) – directed by John Lemont
  • Macbeth (1961) – directed by Paul Almond – TV movie
  • Anna Karenina (1961) – TV movie
  • The Longest Day (1962) – directed by Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, & Bernhard Wicki
  • Dr. No (1962) – directed by Terence Young
  • From Russia with Love (1963) – directed by Terence Young
  • Goldfinger (1964) – directed by Guy Hamilton
  • Marnie (1964) – directed by Alfred Hitchcock
  • Woman of Straw (1964) – directed by Basil Dearden
  • The Hill (1965) – directed by Sidney Lumet
  • Thunderball (1965) – directed by Terence Young
  • Un monde nouveau (1966) – directed by Vittorio De Sica – cameo as himself
  • A Fine Madness (1966) – directed by Irvin Kershner
  • You Only Live Twice (1967) – directed by Lewis Gilbert
  • The Bowler and the Bunnet (1967) – also director, self, documentary
  • Shalako (1968) – directed by Edward Dmytryk
  • The Red Tent (1969) – directed by Mikhail Kalatozov – USSR/Italy
  • The Molly Maguires (1970) – directed by Martin Ritt
  • The Anderson Tapes (1971) – directed by Sidney Lumet
  • Diamonds Are Forever (1971) – directed by Guy Hamilton
  • España campo de golf (1972) – short
  • The Offence (1972) – directed by Sidney Lumet
  • Zardoz (1974) – directed by John Boorman
  • Murder on the Orient Express (1974) – directed by Sidney Lumet
  • Ransom (1974) – directed by Caspar Wrede
  • The Dream Factory (1975) – self – documentary
  • The Wind and the Lion (1975) – directed by John Milius
  • The Man Who Would Be King (1975) – directed by John Huston
  • Robin and Marian (1976) – directed by Richard Lester
  • The Next Man (1976) – directed by Richard C. Sarafian
  • A Bridge Too Far (1977) – directed by Richard Attenborough
  • The First Great Train Robbery (1979) – directed by Michael Crichton
  • Meteor (1979) – directed by Ronald Neame
  • Cuba (1979) – directed by Richard Lester
  • Outland (1981) – directed by Peter Hyams
  • Time Bandits (1981) – directed by Terry Gilliam
  • G’olé! (1982) – directed by Tom Clegg – narrator – documentary
  • Five Days One Summer (1982) – directed by Fred Zinnemann
  • Wrong Is Right (1982) – directed by Richard Brooks
  • Sean Connery’s Edinburgh (1983) – self – short documentary
  • Never Say Never Again (1983) – directed by Irvin Kershner
  • Sword of the Valiant (1984) – directed by Stephen Weeks
  • Highlander (1986) – directed by Russell Mulcahy
  • The Name of the Rose (1986) – directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud
  • The Untouchables (1987) – directed by Brian De Palma
  • The Presidio (1988) – directed by Peter Hyams
  • Memories of Me (1988) – director Henry Winkler – uncredited cameo as himself
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)** – directed by Steven Spielberg
  • Family Business (1989) – directed by Sidney Lumet
  • The Hunt for Red October (1990) – directed by John McTiernan
  • The Russia House (1990) – directed by Fred Schepisi
  • Highlander II: The Quickening (1991) – directed by Russell Mulcahy
  • Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) – directed by Kevin Reynolds – uncredited cameo
  • Medicine Man (1992) – directed by John McTiernan
  • Rising Sun (1993) – directed by Philip Kaufman – also executive producer
  • A Good Man in Africa (1995) – directed by Bruce Beresford
  • Just Cause (1995) – directed by Arne Glimcher – also executive producer
  • First Knight (1995) – directed by Jerry Zucker
  • Dragonheart (1996) – directed by Rob Cohen
  • The Rock (1996) – directed by Michael Bay – also executive producer
  • The Avengers (1998)* – directed by Jeremiah Chechik
  • Playing by Heart (1998) – directed by Willard Carroll
  • Entrapment (1999) – directed by Jon Amiel – also producer
  • Finding Forrester (2000) – directed by Gus Van San – also producer
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)* – directed by Stephen Norrington – also executive producer
  • Sir Billi (2012) – directed by Sascha Hartmann – also executive producer
  • Ever to Excel (2012) – directed by Murray Grigor – narrator – documentary