Sean Connery, several beers past shaking or stirring (1962, via drmacro)

Sean Connery & Aston Martin in Goldfinger (1964, dir. Guy Hamilton) (via guardian.co.uk)

With most women his manner was a mixture of taciturnity and passion. The lengthy approaches to a seduction bored him almost as much as the subsequent mess of disentanglement. He found something grisly in the inevitability of the pattern of each affair. The conventional parabola - sentiment, the touch of the hand, the kiss, the passionate kiss, the feel of the body, the climax in the bed, then more bed, then less bed, then the boredom, the tears and the final bitterness was to him shameful and hypocritical. Even more he shunned the mise en scene for each of those acts in the play — the meeting at a party, the restaurant, the taxi, his flat, her flat, then the week-end by the sea, then the flats again, then the furtive alibis and the final angry farewell on some doorstep in the rain.

-Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (1953)

Oriana Fallaci: So then, Sean, let’s finish with a little test: the names of three men & three women whom you admire, for whom you feel respect & envy.

Sean Connery: The first is Khrushchev. That sense of humor of his, that appetite for living, that non-conformism. Great man. The second is Stanley Matthews, the soccer player. He’s 51, and still plays soccer. I’d like to be him. The third is Picasso: to me he has the same virtues as Khrushchev.

As for women…let’s see…women…let’s see…odd: you know, I can’t think of a single one? Yet I like them a lot, I respect them, I esteem them, I often find them superior to men. I’m one of those who still find women devilishly attractive, irreplaceable…well, that must be why. I mean that, whenever I see a woman, I can never get away from the sex element. The liking and even the admiration, even the respect, I feel for a woman always has sexual origins. A character like me, who loves life, appetite, and strength, can’t get away from sexual desires. And so, when he stops to assess a woman, he can never make out where that thing finishes and pure admiration begins. Do you see what I mean? Khrushchev doesn’t provoke any sexual desires in me, nor does Matthews, nor does Picasso. With them there isn’t that alarming little complication. Alarming. Isn’t it?

Fallaci: Eh, yes. Alarming.

Connery: In fact, I find women very alarming, very worrying. Always. And picking out one I admire and nothing else…let’s see…yes: Greta Garbo. For her talent, her dignity, her silence. And yet, no, even in her case I can’t get away from the fact that if I’d ever been close to her…well…in short…I’d have been very attracted to her, apart from her talent, her dignity, her silence. So, after all, the choice doesn’t stand. Phew! Tell you what we’ll do: we’ll forget about the women for a moment and take the names of two more men. One is Hitchcock and the other is Noel Coward. And now let’s go and have a beer.

-Paris magazine, March, 1965

Q. I was wondering what else, besides soccer and your career, might interest a character like you - such as, I don’t know, politics for example.

Sean Connery: I’ve never voted since I was born. What’s the point? Things go on just the same, and politics is all a question of money: the more money you have, the more successful you are in politics. I’m not a monarchist, but I’m not a republican…I’m not a reactionary, and I’m not a socialist, either, although I see the world from an essentially economic point of view.

It’s all a question of money, my dear, money! I feel sympathy for the workers of course; I was one of them. But I’ve never deluded myself that they’re Jesus Christs. God! I’ve lived too long among them not to know they’re not Jesus Christs. Ideologies leave me cold. I’ve never liked people who talk, I like people who get on with things and do them well and do them thoroughly, without speeches. I’m a practical man.

Do you see what I mean? I admire something done, accomplished and successfully finished, not something theorized and philosophized about. Nothing appeals to me more than strength, energy, enthusiasm. Between the conquered and conquerors, I choose the conquerors, always.

-1965, Look magazine (reprinted in The Limelighters)(photo by Leo Fuchs, 1963)