Sean Connery reveals the biggest mistake of his career: “It’s a stupid scenario”
The more famous, well-known, established, and successful an actor becomes, the less frequently they tend to work. Being a viable commodity means that there are more scripts, better parts, and more exciting directors to work with, which allowed Sean Connery to slow down his output gradually.
To illustrate that point, from his uncredited screen debut in 1954’s Lilacs in the Spring to his final pre-James Bond role in The Longest Day, Connery notched a dozen onscreen appearances in less than eight years. In the eight years after he was cast as 007 and became an international superstar, he only played six characters who weren’t the iconic secret agent.
The one occasion between 1957 and his less than graceful swansong in 2003’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that he starred in three theatrically released films in the same year came in 1974, and he never graced the silver screen more than once annually after 1991.
He was rich, famous, eminently successful, and a keen golfer, making Connery increasingly protective of his downtime. While plenty of thespians love the work so much they’ll dive into multiple productions one after the other, doing it once in such quick succession was more than enough for the grizzled Scotsman.
Although he’d grown accustomed to having more than one movie land in cinemas every year, shooting them back-to-back was a mistake he only made once. “It’s a stupid scenario, doing three films one after the other,” he said, per Entertainment Weekly. “I did The Man Who Would Be King, The Wind and the Lion, and Robin and Marian all one after the other. It was like pushing a quart into a pint bottle. But when you find something you want to do, you do it.”
Barely able to take a breather between pictures, Connery also racked up a decent amount of air miles. John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King did at least give him the pleasure of partnering up with longtime friend Michael Caine, but the international shoot saw him touch down in France and Morocco, with interiors largely shot on sets built at Pinewood Studios.
John Milius’ period piece The Wind and the Lion was shot in at least half a dozen locations dotted around Spain, with Richard Lester’s Robin and Marian requiring Connery to return to the same country in short order. He didn’t have a minute to himself, and from that point, he made a point of never making three consecutive movies without a break.
He’d gone from France, Morocco, and England to Spain before returning home and then immediately returning to Spain again for a trio of historical epics, something he’d go out of his way to avoid doing again for the remaining three decades of his professional life.
