The co-star Sean Connery hated every second of working with: “It was like the school playground”
Once he’d consigned James Bond to the rear-view mirror and forged a successful career for himself away from the bright lights and constant scrutiny of 007, Sean Connery developed a reputation for being one of the most naturally intimidating actors in the industry.
He may not have been doing it on purpose, but the gruff Scotsman had such presence that it came naturally, leaving several directors and producers quaking in their boots. Michael Bay is among Hollywood’s brashest and most cocksure filmmakers, but he was bricking it for a while on The Rock.
While making the same picture, once he’d earned the star’s respect, Connery had Bay’s back and used that intimidation factor to make an executive squirm in order to squeeze more money out of the studio. He could be difficult at times, but it you got on his good side, he was a powerful ally to have.
If he called someone “boy,” then it was the clearest sign that a mutual trust and appreciation had formed. Plenty of people in the business butted heads with Connery at one time or another, and for better or worse, but he wasn’t a happy chappy when the shoe was placed on the other foot and a co-star buried themselves right under his skin.
Director Jean-Jacques Annaud’s period-set literary adaptation, The Name of the Rose, was a critical and commercial hit, and Connery won a ‘Best Actor’ Bafta for his performance as William of Baskerville, a 14th-century monk who investigates a string of suspicious deaths in an effort to root out the culprit.
In a case of life imitating art, his onscreen nemesis, Bernardo Gui, was played by F Murray Abraham, who also became a constant thorn in Connery’s side when the cameras weren’t rolling. His previous picture, Amadeus, had won him the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’, and he was starting to believe his own hype.
“Everybody warned me that Sean Connery was impossible and an extremely difficult character. He was an absolute dream, and I got on with him fantastically,” Annaud said. “My only bad memory of an actor across my whole career, and I’ve directed, I think, thousands of actors, was F Murray Abraham, who played the inquisitor.”
“He was terrible, not so much with me, but rather with Sean,” the director explained. “He would say, ‘I’ve got the Oscar, and he’s an old idiot’. They would both arrive late because Sean didn’t want to wait for F Murray, and F Murray didn’t want to wait for Sean. It was like the school playground.” In fact, things got so bad that the latter tried to take drastic action.
Annaud even revealed that Connery hated him to such an extent that he launched a petition to have him forcibly removed from the Screen Actors Guild, but those pleas fell on deaf ears. In hindsight, Abraham admitted he “started to really believe some of the reviews I was getting,” and it went to his head on The Name of the Rose. Ironically, given his criticism of Connery, the star’s next movie was The Untouchables, which won him an Oscar of his own.
