B U L L E VA R D
LUCKY NUMBERS
JAMES BOND
It’s 50 years since Sean Connery first saved the world in Dr No, but mankind still needs cinema’s greatest secret agent – Daniel Craig is back this month in Skyfall. Pay attention, 007 fans
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Roger Moore (seven films as 007) is the debonair Bond, Pierce Brosnan (four) the savvy, Daniel Craig (three) the tough, Timothy Dalton (two) the emotional, while Sean Connery (six) is the essential Bond. And what of George Lazenby, the enigma? The Australian is the only actor not from the UK or Ireland to play the part, and, aged 30 when On Her Majesty’s Secret Service premiered, the youngest. He was earmarked for more than one Bond film, but making the movie was not a happy experience for him or the producers, and he quit. “I probably would have had three or four Hollywood wives and become a drug addict,” he later joked.
From Ursula Andress to Olga Kurylenko, via Halle Berry and Jane Seymour, James Bond’s thirst for the ladies has been quenched by a string of beautiful actresses. Only two women playing Bond Girls have been older than the man playing Bond opposite them: Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger and Diana Rigg as Teresa di Vincenzo in Desmond OHMSS. Women also dominate the films’ Llewelyn opening credits, with all but two so far featuring sexy silhouettes. Only Dr No and Casino Royale (2006) kick off lady-free.
Vodka martini
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George Lazenby
Bond actors perform many stunts themselves, although Roger Moore had a double for his running scenes, because he felt he looked clumsy. For part of the pre-credits sequence of Moonraker, in which a mid-air Bond wrestles a pilot for the latter’s parachute and then shakes off villain Jaws, stuntmen were filmed in 88 jumps over five weeks. There’s a Bond high-dive you can sample for yourself: a bungee jump from the 220m-high Verzasca Dam in Switzerland, as undertaken by Pierce Brosnan’s 007 in GoldenEye.
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Ursula Andress
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Stanley Kubrick
Sir Ken Adam is the secret genius of the Bond movies. He designed many of the series’ remarkable sets, including villains’ lairs and Fort Knox in Goldfinger. A rocket launch pad inside a dormant volcano, built at Pinewood Studios for You Only Live Twice, with a working monorail and moving helipad, cost as much as the entire budget of Dr No and required 700 tonnes of steel girders. During filming for The Spy Who Loved Me, Adam needed help lighting a double submarine dock inside a supertanker, so he sneaked the director Stanley Kubrick on set for four hours one Sunday, and the two old friends figured it out.
Sean Connery preferred his vodka martinis “shaken, not stirred”. Roger Moore never ordered 007’s signature drink using these words. When asked by a barkeeper how he wanted his cocktail in Casino Royale, Daniel Craig snapped back, “Do I look like I give a damn?” In Quantum Of Solace, Craig is seen slightly the worse for wear after drinking six special martinis on a plane. And yet: Mr Bond’s most frequent onscreen tipple is not a martini, but Champagne. In the 22 official Bond films before Skyfall, he sips champers 38 times.
Verzasca Dam
Jan Werich was cast in the role of Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, but the film’s director, Lewis Gilbert, had him replaced after five days by Donald Pleasence, because Werich looked like a “benevolent Father Christmas”. Desmond Llewellyn enjoyed the longest 007 career, playing Q, the man responsible for Bond’s gadgets: the cars, the exploding pens, the watch lasers. The Welshman appeared in 17 Bond films over 36 years – the most instances of a recurring role in film history – but he had only 30 minutes of screen time in total.
Skyfall opens in cinemas late October: www.skyfall-movie.com
WORDS: ULRICH CORAZZA. PHOTOGRAPHY: SHUTTERSTOCK, GETTY IMAGES (4), PICTUREDESK.COM
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