When Sean Connery passed away at his home in the Bahamas at age 90 on Oct. 31, 2020,
the world mourned a screen legend whose illustrious career included countless memorable roles,
such as his celebrated two-decade run as James Bond. But here's what most people don't know
about Sean Connery.
Sean Connery enlisted in the Scottish Royal Navy at the age of 16, but his military career
didn't last long. He was discharged three years later due to stomach ulcers, according
to The Scotsman. So, at 19 with no real prospects, Connery took on a variety of odd jobs to make
ends meet, including working as a bricklayer and a nude model at the Edinburgh College
of Art. Connery explained this gig to Jay Leno in 1999, saying:
"We used to get six and eight pence an hour for standing stationary and with 15 minutes
off."
But the weirdest job Connery ever held was at a funeral home in Haddington, Scotland,
where he polished coffins. The grandson of the funeral home owner shared a newspaper
clipping of Connery speaking about his time there during a ceremony at Edinburgh's Usher
Hall, which included the fact that when he wasn't polishing coffins, he was bleaching
them to make them look like oak.
During the same Leno interview, Connery told a bleakly funny story about the funeral home
owner, saying:
"We had a chap [who] used to go around and visit the people who were really, very sick.”
“He used to mentally measure them, and then come and tell us what size the box would be.
And then we used to polish them up."
The Lord of the Rings trilogy will go down as one of the most successful film franchises
of all time. Grossing almost $3 billion worldwide, the Peter Jackson-directed epic fantasy is
beloved by fans and will remain that way forever. It's now hard to imagine anyone else other
than Ian McKellen in the role of Gandalf, but he actually wasn't the first choice to
play the wily wizard.
According to NME, Sean Connery was offered $6 million and a 15 percent stake in each
film's box office performance, but turned the role down because he, quote, "never understood
the script." He maintained that stance even after seeing the first film. As Connery put
it:
"I read the book. I read the script. I saw the movie. I still don't understand it. Ian
McKellen, I believe, is marvelous in it."
We know what you're asking: How much money did Connery lose on this? You might want to
sit down. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Connery would have raked in, quote, "the biggest
single payday any actor has ever received" with $450 million. Yikes. The site explained
the situation thusly:
"Even a veteran star like Sean can make a mistake so big that it ultimately causes him
to lose out on a mind-blowing amount of money."
We shouldn't feel too bad for Connery, though, because he was worth an estimated $350 million
at the time of his death.
Sean Connery will live forever as a movie star, but if his life had gone slightly differently,
he’d be known today as a soccer star. Connery played for the Scottish professional football
club Bonnyrigg Rose Athletic in the 1950s. According to The Indian Express, the avid
footballer turned down an offer from Manchester United and decided to pursue acting full-time
instead.
In the book, Sean Connery: The Measure of a Man, former manager of Manchester United,
Sir Matt Busby, spotted Connery playing against a local team while he was on tour with a stage
musical, and offered him a contract of £25, about $32, per week on the spot. Connery declined,
explaining his rationale to Scotland’s Mud and Glory Magazine in 2005:
"I really wanted to accept because I loved football. But I realized that a top-class
footballer could be over the hill by the age of 30, and I was already 23."
However, Connery's love for soccer never left him. He was in regular attendance at Celtic-Rangers
matches in Scotland, and even narrated the official 1982 World Cup film.
Sean Connery's last onscreen performance was in the critically-panned movie, The League
of Extraordinary Gentlemen. After its massive flop back in 2003, Connery publicly slammed
the ill-fated flick's director, Stephen Norrington.
“You’ve done terrible things.”
According to The Independent, the actor once claimed Norrington should have been, quote,
"arrested for insanity," and revealed that the actor himself was forced to be, quote,
"heavily involved in editing" in order to "salvage" the film the best he could.
Connery announced his retirement three years later, while accepting a Lifetime Achievement
Award. Although he was asked by Steven Spielberg to reprise his role as Henry Jones, Senior
with onscreen son Harrison Ford in 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal
Skull, Connery found that, quote, "retirement is just too damned much fun," according to
BBC News.
But in the end, Connery became tired of the Hollywood system. He explained it to The New
Zealand Herald without mincing words:
"I'm fed up with the idiots – the ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies
and the people who green-light the movies. I don't say they're all idiots. I'm just saying
there's a lot of them that are very good at it."
Sean Connery made his debut as James Bond in 1962's Dr. No and portrayed the suave British
agent in six more films in his twenty-year run as 007. And although some might argue
that it was his most iconic role, Connery wasn't actually the biggest Bond fan. The
man himself told The Observer in 2004 that he was, quote, “fed up” with the character,
saying:
"I have always hated that damned James Bond — I'd like to kill him."
One of Connery's best friends, actor Michael Caine, revealed in the book, Sean Connery:
Neither Shaken Nor Stirred, that James Bond wasn't a subject he appreciated fans bringing
up. Caine said:
"He was, and is, a much better actor than just playing James Bond, but he became synonymous
with Bond. He'd be walking down the street and people would say, 'Look, there's James
Bond.' That was particularly upsetting to him."
That being said, we hope Sir Connery would have nonetheless appreciated this statement
from Eon Productions at the time of his October 2020 death:
"He was and shall always be remembered as the original James Bond whose indelible entrance
into cinema history began when he announced those unforgettable words — 'The name's…”
“Bond... James Bond.'"