To me, having seen Sean
Connery portray James Bond in the early 1960s when I was a kid, the great Scot
actor will always be the ideal actor to have portrayed Ian Fleming’s iconic character
James Bond.
I think Ian Fleming would agree.
“The man they have chosen for Bond, Sean
Connery, is a real charmer – fairly unknown but a good actor with the right
looks and physique,” Ian Fleming stated in a letter to a friend as Dr No was being filmed.
In my view, Timothy
Dalton (seen in the below photo), having appeared as James Bond in two films, is the second-best Bond.
Catherine Shoard at the
Guardian notes that the readers of the Radio Times agree with me.
She offers a piece at
the Guardian on the Radio Times survey that voted Sean Connery as
the greatest James Bond actor, with Timothy Dalton in second place.
Sean Connery has swept
to victory in a new survey seeking to find the best ever James Bond, with
actors assumed to be strong contenders sidelined in favour of dark sheep.
Connery took 56% of the vote in the first
round of the Radio Times poll; as befits the gravity of the issue at hand, a
complicated multi-knockout round system was employed.
In the final reckoning, Timothy Dalton was the
surprise runner-up, taking 32% of the votes in the climactic round, with
Connery on 44% and Pierce Brosnan on
23%.
Trailing behind were Roger Moore – often
assumed to be a firm fan favourite – incumbent Bond Daniel Craig, and George
Lazenby.
Connery, 89, is often felt to be the
definitive 007 not simply because he was the first actor to take the part, in
1962’s Dr No, but because of his facility with a quip and an eyebrow.
Ian Fleming, on whose books the Bond series is
based, initially favoured Cary Grant for the part, but warmed up to Connery
after he proved a critical and commercial hit. Connery’s tenure lasted a total
of seven movies.
You can read the rest
of the piece via the below link:
Note: Yes, Ian Fleming was not immediately taken with working
class and rugged Sean Connery as James Bond, and yes, he wanted Cary Grant or
some other established British actor to land the part, but as I noted above, Ian
Fleming was won over by Sean Connery as they were filming Dr. No.
And people liked
Connery for his rugged looks and fine acting ability, rather than just his
facility with a quip. And Roger Moore, not Sean Connery, was the actor whose favored
acting technique was the raised eyebrow.
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