Sean Connery

Sir Thomas Sean Connery (25 August 1930 – 31 October 2020) was a Scottish actor.

Thomas Connery was born at the Royal Maternity Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 25 August 1930; he was named after his paternal grandfather.

He was brought up at No. 176 Fountainbridge, a block which has since been demolished.

His mother, Euphemia McBain "Effie" McLean, was a cleaning woman.

The daughter of Neil McLean and Helen Forbes Ross, she was named after her father's mother, Euphemia McBain, wife of John McLean and daughter of William McBain from Ceres in Fife.

Connery's father, Joseph Connery, was a factory worker and lorry driver.

In 1946, at the age of 16, Connery joined the Royal Navy, during which time he acquired two tattoos.

Connery's official website says "unlike many tattoos, his were not frivolous – his tattoos reflect two of his lifelong commitments: his family and Scotland. ... One tattoo is a tribute to his parents and reads 'Mum and Dad', and the other is self-explanatory, 'Scotland Forever'".

He trained in Portsmouth at the naval gunnery school and in an anti-aircraft crew.

He was later assigned as an Able Seaman on HMS Formidable.

Connery was discharged from the navy at the age of 19 on medical grounds because of a duodenal ulcer, a condition that affected most of the males in previous generations of his family.

Afterwards, he returned to the co-op and worked as a lorry driver, a lifeguard at Portobello swimming baths, a labourer, an artist's model for the Edinburgh College of Art, and after a suggestion by former Mr. Scotland Archie Brennan, as a coffin polisher, among other jobs.

The modelling earned him 15 shillings an hour.

Artist Richard Demarco, at the time a student who painted several early pictures of Connery, described him as "very straight, slightly shy, too, too beautiful for words, a virtual Adonis".

While his official website states he was third in the 1950 Mr. Universe contest, most sources place him in the 1953 competition, either third in the Junior class or failing to place in the Tall Man classification.

Connery said he was soon deterred from bodybuilding when he found that Americans frequently beat him in competitions because of sheer muscle size and, unlike Connery, refused to participate in athletic activity which could make them lose muscle mass.

Connery was a keen footballer, having played for Bonnyrigg Rose in his younger days.

He was offered a trial with East Fife.

Connery began bodybuilding at the age of 18, and from 1951 trained heavily with Ellington, a former gym instructor in the British Army.

He was the first actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond on film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983.

Connery originated the role in Dr. No (1962) and continued starring as Bond in the Eon Productions films From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971).

Their films in which Connery appeared included Marnie (1964), The Hill (1965), The Offence (1973), Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and The Man Who Would Be King (1975).

He also acted in Robin and Marian (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Time Bandits (1981), Highlander (1986), The Name of the Rose (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996) and Finding Forrester (2000).

Connery made his final appearance in the franchise in Never Say Never Again (1983), a non-Eon-produced Bond film.

He is also known for his notable collaborations with directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Lumet and John Huston.

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 and a knight by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to drama in 2000.

His final on-screen role was as Allan Quatermain in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003).

Connery received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award, the first Scottish actor to win the lattermost achievement.

In 2009, Connery recalled a conversation in a taxi:

"When I took a taxi during a recent Edinburgh Film Festival, the driver was amazed that I could put a name to every street we passed. 'How come?' he asked. 'As a boy I used to deliver milk round here', I said. 'So what do you do now?' That was rather harder to answer."

Two of his paternal great-grandparents emigrated to Scotland from Wexford, Ireland in the mid-19th century, with his great-grandfather James Connery being an Irish Traveller.

The remainder of his family was of Scottish descent, and his maternal great-grandparents were native Scottish Gaelic speakers from Fife and Uig on Skye.

His father was a Roman Catholic, and his mother was a Protestant.

Connery had a younger brother Neil and was generally referred to in his youth as "Tommy".

Although he was small in primary school, he grew rapidly around the age of 12, reaching his full adult height of 6 ft at 18.

Connery was known during his teen years as "Big Tam", and he said that he lost his virginity to an adult woman in an ATS uniform at the age of 14.

He had an Irish childhood friend named Séamus; when the two were together, those who knew them both called Connery by his middle name Sean, emphasising the alliteration of the two names.

Since then Connery preferred to use his middle name.

Connery's first job was as a milkman in Edinburgh with St. Cuthbert's Co-operative Society.