Why Sean Connery refused to appear in ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’
When it comes to acting, retirement isn’t quite as ironclad as it is in other professions, but not even the prospect of what would have been a bumper payday was enough to convince Sean Connery that his self-imposed exile from Hollywood was worth ending.
In a cruel twist of fate that ultimately ended his career, Connery – fresh from turning down the part of both Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Architect in The Matrix sequels – suddenly decided that he was interested in boarding an effects-heavy blockbuster after all.
Unfortunately, the project in question turned out to be The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, an experience that secured it a place in cinematic infamy as the last movie for both its leading man and director Stephen Norrington, who found themselves at loggerheads throughout production.
However, if there was one person who could tempt the original James Bond to return to the screen, then Steven Spielberg would have been near the top of the list. When the fourth Indiana Jones adventure was in development and cycling through countless drafts of the screenplay before settling on what would eventually become Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Connery’s Henry Jones Sr was repeatedly floated for a return.
In the end, it’s confirmed on-screen that the father of Harrison Ford’s title hero had passed away at some point after The Last Crusade, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying to secure the star. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Connery admitted that he’d spoken to Spielberg about potentially reprising his role, but “it didn’t work out”.
At the time Kingdom of the Crystal Skull began filming in June 2007, Connery was 76 years old and hadn’t set foot on a film set for over four years. Not only that, but he was enjoying retirement too much, and didn’t fancy the prospect of getting back under the bright lights for what would essentially be an extended cameo, something he described as “not that generous a part”.
Connery felt such minimal screentime wasn’t “worth getting back into the harness to go for”, while he didn’t really see the need for his character to be part of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for any other reason than nostalgia-driven fan service either, admitting “they had taken the story in a different line anyway, so the father of Indy was kind of really not that important”.
Technically, Henry Jones Sr popping up at one stage would have made sense given the familial theme of the derided fourth instalment that saw Indy reconnect with Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood and discover Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt Williams is his son, but Connery couldn’t be swayed. Based on the heated response to the end product, it turned out to be the right decision to leave his contributions to the saga as strictly a one-off.
