Roger Moore, Who Played James Bond the Longest, Dies at 89
Roger Moore, the handsome Londoner who portrayed James Bond in more films than anyone else and did so with cartoonish, cheeky charm and probably for a bit too long, has died. He was 89.
A message from his children, shared on the actor's official Twitter account, read, "It is with a heavy heart that we must announce our loving father, Sir Roger Moore, has passed away today in Switzerland after a short but brave battle with cancer."
Before Bond, Moore made his reputation as a suave leading man on the television series
Maverick,
The Saint and
The Persuaders.
After George Lazenby was done as 007 in
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Moore took on the guise of the superspy in
Live and Let Die (1973) and stayed for
The Man With the Golden Gun (1974),
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977),
Moonraker (1979),
For Your Eyes Only (1981),
Octopussy (1983) and
A View to a Kill (1985), which hit theaters when he was nearly 58. He said it was his choice to leave the franchise.
His Bond was more of a charmer than a fighter, more of a stirrer than was the shaker embodied by the first Bond, Scotsman Sean Connery. Moore took on the role with a grain of salt, not to mention cigars — as part of his contract, he reportedly was given unlimited Montecristos during production.
“My personality is entirely different than previous Bonds. I’m not that cold-blooded killer type. Which is why I play it mostly for laughs,” he once said. Moore’s devilish smile and famously cocked eyebrow made his Bond a more polished, albeit less pugnacious, chap than former bodybuilder Connery’s robust warrior.
Moore played Bond more than any other actor — while bedding a total of 19 beauties, by one count — and his films earned more than $1 billion at the box office. But he considered himself to be the fourth-best 007, trailing Connery, Daniel Craig and Lazenby. And after leaving the series, he acted only sporadically.
Earlier, Moore starred for six seasons as the slick Simon Templar, who makes a living stealing from crooks, in the popular 1962-69 series
The Saint, which aired in the U.K. on ITV and in the U.S. on NBC (an international hit, it sold to more than 80 countries.)
In a 2014 interview, Moore lamented the fact that he pretty much always played the good guy.
“I wasn’t an Albert Finney or a Tom Courtenay,” he said. “I didn’t have their natural talent, I had to work quite hard at acting. My life’s been all right, but people like that get to play wonderful parts. I spent my life playing heroes because I looked like one. Practically everything I’ve been offered didn’t require much beyond looking like me. I would have loved to have played a real baddie.”
Working around his 007 assignments, Moore appeared in
Shout at the Devil (1976) with Lee Marvin,
The Wild Geese (1978) with Richard Burton,
The Sea Wolves (1980) with Gregory Peck and David Niven and
The Cannonball Run (1981) with Burt Reynolds.
In 1999, Moore was awarded the Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, and knighthood followed in 2003. He spent the past several years doing charity work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
Survivors include his wife Kristina, whom he married in 2002, and children Deborah, Geoffrey and Christian.
To describe his version of Bond in relation to others, Moore told NPR in November 2014: “I look like a comedic lover, and Sean [Connery] in particular, and Daniel Craig now, they are killers. They look like killers. I wouldn’t like to meet Daniel Craig on a dark night if I’d said anything bad about him.
“George [Lazenby], Timothy [Dalton] and Pierce [Brosnan], we’ve been together, the four of us. But Sean, Sean really was sort of not that enamored of being confused with James Bond all the time. Sean…damn good actor, but he felt that he was only being remembered for Bond. I personally don’t give a damn. I just want to be remembered as somebody who paid his debts.”
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