SEAN CONNERY STRUGGLES, STARDOM & 007

THE ACTOR FOUND FAME AS JAMES BOND, BUT HE WAS HAPPIEST JUST BEING A REGULAR GUY

- Lisa Chambers, Amanda Champagne-Meadows

Sean Connery didn't want to be James Bond. Even before he took on the role in 1962's Dr. No, his first instinct about playing Ian Fleming's iconic spy was that it would be a character he couldn't escape. "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," Sean said. "Contracts choke you, and I wanted to be free."

Even so, says biographer Herbie J Pilato, "if anyone was born to play a role, it was Sean Connery and James Bond." Pilato's new book, Connery, Sean Connery: Before, During, and After His Most Famous Role, is being released on the 40th anniversary of Never Say Never Again. The actor was inextricably tied to 007, but before he slid into the driver's seat of Bond's Aston Martin, Sean, who died at age 90 in 2020, felt Bond wasn't a natural fit. A steak-and-potatoes Scotsman who preferred beer over martinis and Levi's over Savile Row suits, he was a self-educated, voracious reader and called himself "more introvert than extrovert." As Pilato tells Closer, "He was beyond James Bond in so many ways. His life struggles toughened him to be perfect for that role. [But] he never forgot where he came from."