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R.I.P. Roger Moore

 
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Pow
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PostPosted: Tue May 23, 2017 9:26 am    Post subject: R.I.P. Roger Moore Reply with quote

Sir Roger Moore has passed away at the age of 89.

Moore portrayed James Bond in 7 movies.
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Tue May 23, 2017 2:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Roger Moore, James Bond in the '70s and '80s, Dies at 89

Roger Moore, the tall, blue-eyed James Bond star whose deft touch helped lift the spy-action franchise to new box-office heights in the 1970s and 1980s, died today in Switzerland at age 89. His family posted a letter to the actor's Twitter account, confirming his death "after a short but brave battle with cancer."
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Custer
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PostPosted: Wed May 24, 2017 7:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote



From the obituary in The Times this morning:

Sir Roger Moore

Debonair actor with a nice line in raised eyebrows who made millions as 007 in the James Bond films and Simon Templar on TV


Sir Roger Moore may not have been the best Bond, indeed by his own estimation he was the fourth best, but off screen he was undoubtedly the most endearing of the actors who played the role. This likeability had much to do with his unwillingness, perhaps inability, to take himself too seriously. When he was cast in the 007 role, for example, he was asked what he thought he[/img] could bring to it. More brooding menace than Sean Connery, perhaps? More sex appeal than George Lazenby? He replied: "White teeth." And when critics accused him of being a one-eyebrow actor, he countered that this was unfair because he was, in fact, a two-eyebrow actor.

"The eyebrows thing was my own fault," he once said in an interview. "I was talking about how talentless I was and said I have three expressions — eyebrow up, eyebrow down and both of them at the same time. And they used it — very well, I must say."

When Moore succeeded Connery as James Bond, he had the daunting task of following an actor who had made the part his own. He had none of Connery's hard Scottish wit and cynical, throwaway style, and for a man who disliked violence, he seemed not the ideal person to trade it on screen. Moore had been considered for 007 before Connery, and was the choice of Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, but had been rejected, ironically, as being too young. (Moore was two years older than Connery.)

In the event Moore, through seven outings as 007 between 1973 and 1985, created as distinctive a Bond as Connery, and a distinctively different one. Moore's Bond was relaxed and debonair and survived death-threatening predicaments with an effortless charm. Connery's cynicism was replaced with, yes, arched eyebrows and one-liners, some of which Moore improvised.

He lacked the hard-boiled approach of Connery's portrayal, describing himself as "a devout coward" who phoned his parents every day when he was on location. The gunfight scenes always made him nervous, he said. "I hate loud bangs — every time I had to fire a gun I blinked. They always had to go through the film and edit out the frame where I closed my eyes."

When he first took the role, the films' producer Cubby Broccoli told him he needed to "lose a little weight and get into shape". He replied: "Why didn't you just cast a thin, fit fellow and avoid putting me through this hell?" However, he went to a doctor, who prescribed appetite suppressants. "I was drugged up to the eyeballs," he recalled, and had to wean himself off them.

He was always determined to treat the role with the respect he felt it deserved. "The Bond situations are so ridiculous, so outrageous," he cheerfully admitted. "I mean, this man is supposed to be a spy and yet everybody knows he's a spy. Every bartender in the world offers him martinis that are shaken, not stirred. What kind of serious spy is recognised everywhere he goes? It's outrageous. So you have to treat the humour outrageously as well. My personality is different from previous Bonds. I'm not that cold-blooded killer type. Which is why I play it mostly for laughs."
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