Respect is also a question of volume. Too often the main character’s appearance is drowned out in the chatter at receptions. Not that evening during the Berlinale 2001, at the exclusive reception for the competition film “Finding Forrester”.
After just under an hour the mood was already very lively, then the noise level suddenly dropped, and everyone turned to the person for whom they had come to the Ritz-Carlton, then still on Brahmsstrasse in Grunewald: Sir Sean Connery, leading actor of the, well, rightly forgotten film.
He also embodied Richard the Lionheart
First he got a glass in his hand, he could hardly empty it, because whoever held on to himself wanted to be introduced to him, lined up in the queue of those hoping for a few nice words, a handshake, even the old hotte Buchholz, who had previously dimmed lonely at a table, perked up.
A social event like any other? Oh well, it was more like a ceremony of veneration: a legend, a king of his profession, granted his followers an audience.
Sir Connery, who died on Saturday night in the Bahamas at the age of 90, had experience with the role of cinematic majesty. He was in John Huston’s “The Man Who Wanted to Be King” at the side of Michael Caine the ruler of Kafiristan, one of his particularly successful films, as he himself said.
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He even made it to the legendary Richard the Lionheart in “Robin Hood – The Thief King”, a brief surprise appearance in the final scene, the critics were specifically asked not to reveal anything. And if he was not allowed to be king himself, he was in the service of Her Majesty – as her most devoted and most successful agent, James Bond alias 007.
The role was Connery a blessing and a bit of a curse at the same time. Without her, the line at the Ritz Carlton would have been shorter, she had catapulted him to the top of his profession, made him a superstar, but at the same time committed to a role that he coped with with a lot of toughness and the necessary dose of humor, but he had to pedal hard so as not to be judged again and again.
Humor was important to him in all roles
007 was not forgotten in spite of all his further successes, he remained its most revered actor and had no objections himself when scriptwriters alluded to it. “Have you never read my résumé?”, Connery asks his film partner Nicolas Cage in the Alcatraz thriller “The Rock” and explains a little later: “I had an excellent education with the British secret service.” When joining the Scottish National Party 1991 only came up with one membership number anyway: 007.
The humor that his secret agent was allowed to show, unlike his current actor Daniel Craig, ran through the entire oeuvre of Connery, and can be seen as a common denominator in almost all of his films. “When I read a script, the first thing I do is look to see if the main character has a sense of humor,” he once admitted. “A character’s humor reveals much more about them than historical facts, their anger or aggression.”
And he himself showed him on the occasion of his greatest acting triumph, when he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1988 for his role in the Al Capone drama “The Untouchables”. An avid golfer since “Goldfinger”, he “would have preferred to win the US Open in golf”.
Sir Sean Connery was a Scot and was born out of passion on August 25, 1930 in Edinburgh. “Scotland Forever” – he willingly showed the tattoo on his right forearm when asked. And of course he had appeared in front of the Queen in a kilt when she knighted him on July 5, 2000 in his hometown.
Such honors were really out of the question when he made his screen debut in 1953, still as an extra in Peter Zadek’s film “Simon”. Nine years later he was allowed to scurry through the picture in the Normandy spectacle “The longest day”. Immediately afterwards came “James Bond – 007 is chasing Dr. No ”- the hour of birth of the film character who Connery was to embody five more times and for him the breakthrough as an actor.
As the father of Indiana Jones, only he could be considered
The character coined by Connery became a rarely achieved role model for countless action heroes, even an adventurous archaeologist like Indiana Jones and its director Steven Spielberg had to pay the reference, because only who could be considered as an Indie’s father? Sean Connery. The role was actually his last, in a way.
Although he had said goodbye to the film business in 2003 with “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” with a premiere in Berlin, he was back in town two years later to be honored with the European Film Prize for his life’s work. In 2008 he was seen again in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, so to speak posthumously, in a photo kept by his film son.
But despite all of Connery’s roles: He never got rid of Bond entirely, as an incident in February 1990, seven years after his last 007 film “Never Say Never”, shows. He was caught on a California freeway at too high a speed and a trial was about to begin. The judge showed no mercy: “He just wasn’t sitting in an Austin Healey and could pull a puddle of oil behind him and throw a smoke screen.” Austin Healey? The man had no idea.
