Hollywood isn’t all glitz and glamour, with actors routinely put through their paces to get the right shot – something once experienced by Sean Connery, who ended up being spat in the face up to 16 times by his co-star.
In 1986, the Scottish James Bond actor led historical thriller The Name of the Rose, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s adaptation of Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel, playing a Franciscan friar recruited to solve a deadly mystery in a medieval abbey.
Among Connery’s co-stars in the film was Hellboy actor Ron Perlman, who played the “intellectually challenged” hunchbacked monk Salvatore, who, in one scene, spits in the friar’s eye.
However, when it came to filming the scene, Perlman froze. “I spent every moment I could with Sean Connery, watching him act and listening to his stories – he was my hero, the real deal,” the actor said in a new interview, adding: “When it came to the scene where I had to spit in his eye, I just couldn’t do it.”
Perlman told The Guardian that the straight-shooting Connery took him to one side and told him: “Ron, if you don’t actually spit in my face, we’ll be here all f***ing day.”
He continued: “So I finally just let one fly. The problem was, you don’t film from just one angle, you have to recreate in profile, medium shot, closeup, over-the-shoulder. I must have spat in Sean Connery’s face 16 times that day.
Connery, who played 007 in seven films from 1962 until 1983, died in October 2020, aged 90.
The actor’s son, Jason, said his father "had many of his family around him" when he died in his sleep in Nassau, the Bahamas.
Jason revealed that Connery had been “unwell for some time”, adding in a statement: “A sad day for all who knew and loved my dad and a sad loss for all people around the world who enjoyed the wonderful gift he had as an actor.
Bond was Connery’s breakthrough role following a decade of stage and TV roles in the 1950s. Connery’s first appearance as 007 came in Dr No in 1962. His other Bond films included From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), and You Only Live Twice (1967).
He returned to the role twice more in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Never Say Never Again (1983).
Bond was Connery’s breakthrough role following a decade of stage and TV roles in the 1950s.
Connery became disillusioned with the role towards the end of his tenure, with his friend, Sir Michael Caine, revealing in an interview: “If you were his friend in these early days you didn’t raise the subject of Bond. He was, and is, a much better actor than just playing James Bond, but he became synonymous with Bond. That was upsetting to him.”
Post-Bond, Connery starred alongside Caine in adventure film The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Time Bandits (1981) and Steven Spielberg’s 1989 sequel Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He played the Harrison Ford character’s father, Henry Jones Sr.
Connery won his only Oscar for the role of Jimmy Malone in Brian De Palma’s 1987 gangster film The Untouchables.
Other famous credits include fantasy film Highlander (1986), action thriller The Rock (1996) and adventure flop The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), which is widely believed to have prompted his retirement from acting.
Connery – who was knighted by the Queen in 2000 – is said to have detested his experience so much that he had no desire to return to the profession.
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