Roger Moore, Who Played James Bond 007 Times, Dies at 89
Roger
Moore, the dapper British actor who brought tongue-in-cheek humor to
the James Bond persona in seven films, eclipsing his television career,
which had included starring roles in at least five series, died on
Tuesday in Switzerland. He was 89.
The death, attributed to cancer, was confirmed in a family statement on Twitter. His family did not say where in Switzerland he had died.
Mr.
Moore was the oldest Bond ever hired for films in the official series —
although David Niven was in his 50s when he played Bond in the spoof
“Casino Royale” — taking on the role when he was 45. (Sean Connery, who
originated the film character and with whom Mr. Moore was constantly
compared, was 32 when the first Bond film, “Dr. No,” was released.) Mr.
Moore also had the longest run in the role, beginning in 1973 with “Live
and Let Die” and winding up in 1985 with “A View to a Kill.”
When
he became 007, the author Ian Fleming’s sexy secret agent with a
license to kill, Mr. Moore was already well known to American audiences.
After playing the title role in a British medieval-adventure series,
“Ivanhoe,” shown in the United States in syndication in 1958, and
starring in “The Alaskans,” a short-lived (1959-60) ABC gold-rush
series, he replaced the departing James Garner in the fourth season
(1960-61) of the western hit “Maverick.” His decidedly non-Western
accent was explained away by the British education of his character,
Beauregard Maverick, the original hero’s cousin.
From
1962 to 1969, Mr. Moore was Simon Templar, the title character of “The
Saint,” a wildly popular British series about an adventurous,
smooth-talking thief. It did so well in syndication in America that NBC
adopted it for its prime-time schedule from 1967 to 1969. Two years
later, Mr. Moore and Tony Curtis starred in ABC’s one-season series “The
Persuaders” as playboy partners solving glamorous European crimes.
After
surrendering the Bond role to Timothy Dalton, Mr. Moore appeared in a
half-dozen largely unexceptional movies, made a few television
appearances and did voice work in animated films. Mostly, however, he
turned his attention elsewhere, becoming a Unicef good-will ambassador
in 1991. He was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1999 and was
knighted in 2003.
Roger
George Moore was born on Oct. 14, 1927, in Stockwell, South London, the
only child of George Alfred Moore, a London police officer who dabbled
in amateur theater, and the former Lily Pope. Early on, Roger expressed
interest in becoming a commercial artist and worked while a teenager at
an animation company. But he fell into movie extra work, was encouraged
by a director to pursue acting and entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic
Art in 1944.
He
was drafted during the final year of World War II, serving as a second
lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps. After the war he did stage
work in London and Cambridge, England, and appeared in mostly uncredited
movie parts. He left for the United States in 1953.
Mr.
Moore made his American television debut that year playing a French
diplomat on an episode of NBC’s “Robert Montgomery Presents.” His first
credited film role was a small one, as a tennis pro in “The Last Time I
Saw Paris” (1954), starring a young Elizabeth Taylor. His second movie
was the romantic melodrama “Interrupted Melody” (1955), with Eleanor
Parker. But he soon returned to Britain and spent the rest of his career
doing a mix of British, American and European projects.
During
his tenure as James Bond, Mr. Moore played almost a score of unrelated
acting roles, most notably in “The Cannonball Run” (1981), the car-race
comedy with Burt Reynolds, and the television movie “Sherlock Holmes in
New York” (1976), in which he starred as Holmes and John Huston played
Professor Moriarty.
Mr.
Moore’s only visits to Broadway were brief and, in different ways,
unpleasant. In 1953 he had a small role in the British drama “A Pin to
See the Peepshow,” which opened and closed on the same night. Exactly 50
years later he appeared as the mystery guest star in Hamish McColl and
Sean Foley’s comedy “The Play What I Wrote” and collapsed onstage. He
received a pacemaker at a New York hospital the next day. (He was
already a 10-year survivor of prostate cancer.)
In
between, Andrew Lloyd Webber cast him in his 1989 musical, “Aspects of
Love,” in London, but Mr. Moore dropped out a month before the opening.
(He said at the time that he was unhappy with his singing voice, but he
later said that he had left at Mr. Lloyd Webber’s request.)
His last film appearance was a supporting role in “The Carer” (2016), about an aging and ailing British actor (Brian Cox).
Mr.
Moore married four times and was divorced three. He met his first wife
(1946-53), Doorn Van Steyn, at acting school in London. He married
Dorothy Squires in 1953 and left her in the early ’60s for Luisa
Mattioli, whom he had met making an Italian film, but their divorce was
not final until 1968. He married Ms. Mattioli the next year and had
three children with her. They divorced in 1996, and in 2002 he married
the Swedish-born Kristina Tholstrup, who survives him.
He is also survived by his sons, Geoffrey and Christian; a daughter, Deborah; and grandchildren.
Mr.
Moore had definite opinions about playing heroic adventurers long
before he became Bond. “I would say your average hero has a super ego,
an invincible attitude and an overall death wish,” he told The New York
Times in 1970. “He’s slightly around the twist, isn’t he?”
“In
theatrical terms, I’ve never had a part that demands much of me,” he
added. “The only way I’ve had to extend myself has been to carry on
charming.”
Correction: May 23, 2017
An earlier version of this obituary misspelled the given name of Mr. Moore’s wife. She is Kristina Tholstrup, not Christina.
An earlier version of this obituary misspelled the given name of Mr. Moore’s wife. She is Kristina Tholstrup, not Christina.
Correction: May 23, 2017
An earlier version of this obituary misstated the ages of both Sean Connery and Mr. Moore when they first played James Bond. Mr. Connery was 32, not 33, when “Dr. No” was released; and Mr. Moore was 45, not 46, when he began filming “Live and Let Die.”
An earlier version of this obituary misstated the ages of both Sean Connery and Mr. Moore when they first played James Bond. Mr. Connery was 32, not 33, when “Dr. No” was released; and Mr. Moore was 45, not 46, when he began filming “Live and Let Die.”
