Sean Connery

Sean Connery rose from the slums of Edinburgh, Scotland, to become, in mythic rags-to-riches fashion, one of the screen's most enduring and respected luminaries. This work is the most complete and up-to-date assessment of the actor's life and career, as well as a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of the business in which he has excelled. Beginning with his humble origins in Depression Era Scotland, the author, an established motion-picture.

historian, takes the reader through Connery's years in British theater and television to his present-day super-celebrity status. Connery's breakthrough as James Bond established him as a potent "sex symbol," but his determination to shake the Bondian typecasting led him to hits as diverse as The Anderson Tapes and The Man Who Would Be King. Well-regarded but unsuccessful ventures in the late 1970s and early 1980s left him broke, but when it seemed his career had run its. course, Connery was back, larger than ever, with an Oscar-winning performance in The Untouchables, and roles in such successes as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Hunt for Red October. Sean Connery emerges here, the author suggests, as a minefield of contradictions: happily married, with a legendary history of conquests; easy-going, yet remarkably unforgiving. Interviews with Connery's friends, foes and the women he has known - as well as with directors of some. of his most memorable films, including Sidney Lumet, Terry Gilliam, Richard Lester and Fred Zinnemann - result in a wonderfully frank, unflinching portrait of one of the world's most formidable, skilled and complex superstars.