Nothing floors Hollywood quite so much as an ordinary man with a reasonably strong character, and whenever one comes to town he stands out like a sea horse in a colony of jellyfish. One is there now. He is a polite, amiable, tall, dark, and loose-hung Scot named Sean Connery, who divides his time. In every other film he makes, he is Ian Fleming's Secret Agent James Bond (Dr. No, From Russia with Love). Now working in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie, he is playing a company owner who tries to cure a pretty kleptomaniac (Tippi Hedren) and woos her as well.
In Hollywood, Connery is considered offbeat two or three times over. First, he asked to read the script of Marnie before accepting the job. "Even Cary Grant doesn't ask to read a Hitchcock script," said Hitchcock's agent in London. "Well, I'm not Cary Grant," said Connery. "If you want me, send me a script." He picks up checks (something most actors consider against union rules), he has no personal pressagent, and out of sheer disinterest, he turns down invitations that others might pay for: he was asked to help set the cornerstone of MCA's new skyscraper, but he shot a round of golf instead.
Fast Lessons. His individualism is just right for Agent Bond, who makes steely love, is a wine snob, and likes to rub people out without spilling blood on the carpet. But Bond is a phony and Connery is not. Bond flashes his acquired taste for champagne, but Connery just orders beer. Connery goes around Hollywood in new Levi's and sweatshirts. Just before the recent arrival of his wife (Actress Diane Cilento) and their two children, he moved into a $1,000-a-month Bel Air house carrying nothing but a small suitcase and a carton of groceries.
Now 33, Connery was born in Edinburgh, where his father was a truck driver. He quit school at 15, joined the Royal Navy at 16, and was medically discharged at 19 for stomach ulcers. He bears two souvenirs of his Navy career tattooed on his forearm: "MUM AND DAD" and "SCOTLAND FOREVER." He worked at odd jobs like coffin polishing. Then a friend told him that a dancer was needed for the chorus of the London production of South Pacific. Connery took a fast 48 hours of private dancing lessons and got the job.
Soft Sell. Connery is now making more than $200,000 a go, and he has a contractual guarantee of one freelance role for every appearance as Bond. He will soon be doing Fleming's Goldfinger, and after that he will go to Ireland to be Sean O'Casey in a film biography planned by Director John Ford.
As for Hollywood, the canny Scot thinks of it as a nice place to visit. "It's a very seductive atmosphere," he says in his soft-skirring burr. "One could easily turn into a sort of sweet lush."