Sean "James Bond" Connery Biography

Actor. Born Thomas Sean Connery on August 25, 1930 in Fountainbridge, Scotland. The son of Joe, a truck driver, and Euphamia, a 20-year-old housewife, Connery had a modest upbringing in a neighborhood known as "the street of a thousand smells" for the stench of the local rubber mill and several breweries that always filled the air. His home was a two-room flat in "tenement land," where the infant slept in a bureau drawer because his parents couldn't afford a crib. "We were very poor," Connery has commented, "but I never knew how poor because that's how everyone was there." Joe brought home only a few shillings a week, and those were often spent on whiskey or gambling. After Bond, Sean Connery continued to work regularly—The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Robin and Marian (1976), The Great Train Robbery (1979), Time Bandits (1981), and The Name of the Rose (1986)—and finally won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a Chicago cop on the trail of Al Capone in 1987's The Untouchables. His career continued forward with no signs of slowing down. He played the father of the title character in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and, in 1990, Connery played a defecting Russian submarine captain Marko Ramius in The Hunt for Red October. Other films include Medicine Man (1992); his prison action-adventure, The Rock (1996) with Nicolas Cage; as well as The Avengers (1998) with Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman; Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991); First Knight (1995); and Dragonheart (1996). He played a cat burglar in the love story-thriller Entrapment (1999) with Catherine Zeta-Jones. In 2000, he starred in the film Finding Forrester and in 2003, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He's been called "the rogue with the brogue", and at almost 60 years of age in 1989, was named People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive." But while his professional work is applauded, his personal choices have often come under fire. "I'm not shy about voicing what I believe to be true," he said in 1998 when he was denied a British knighthood due to his active support for the Scottish National Party. (He was later knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.) In 1999, Connery also received a Kennedy Center Honor for Lifetime Achievement. After decades in the spotlight, Connery remains a street-smart, self-made man who never apologizes, and time doesn't seem to have mellowed him. Sir Sean Connery, with his charm, sex appeal, and trademark braggadocio, credits none other than himself for his success and longevity. But he acknowledges a debt to his fans as well. "Everything I've done has had to be accomplished in my own cycle, my own time, on my own behalf, and with my own sweat," he has said. "But if people hadn't liked what I was doing, I'd probably be delivering milk today—and I never forget that.