Words: Michael Feeney Callan

Sean Connery… Oscar-winning actor, tireless campaigner for underprivileged children and, for the last 16 years, patron of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The James Bond star and Hollywood veteran has come a long way since his childhood in a Scottish tenement

THERE IS A TALE told by John Boorman, the director of Excalibur, which defi nes the importance of Scotland in Sir Sean Connery’s thinking. At a dinner party, recounts Boorman, one of the guests queried Connery on his thick Scottish accent which he retained even when playing a Berber in The Wind and the Lion . "If I didn’t act in my normal voice," replied Connery, "I wouldn’t know who the hell I am." This month Sir Sean gets another opportunity to restate his fi delity to his homeland when he returns for his 16th year as patron to the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which runs from 15-26 August. Last year was the festival’s 60th anniversary, making it the longest continually running fi lm festival in the world. It also coincided with Connery’s 76th birthday. He hosted the celebration party at the National Gallery, participated in a lively Q&A and accepted a BAFTA Scotland Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film. "Anyone who knows anything about fi lm supports this," Connery told the BBC, "because it has produced lots of successes and it will produce even more because we have a plan to develop it even further."

That grandstand promise, which whets the appetites of young British fi lm-makers dependent on showcasing and networking, also marked the high point of Sir Sean’s movie year. Because 2003’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was the last movie he did before off-handedly announcing his retirement the following year.

The reclusive years that followed, when he retreated to his small bungalow in the Bahamas, were dotted with health scares (a benign tumour was removed on his kidney) and staccato commentaries on the progress of Scottish nationalist goals. There was talk of a return to high adventure, reprising the role of Harrison Ford’s father, Henry, in the long-promised fourth Indiana Jones movie from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. But Connery via his LA agent Doc O’Connor, always shied away from confi rmation, and on 9 June fi nally announced that he was no longer in the running for any acting role. "Retirement is just too much darn fun," he posted on his website, to the chagrin of millions.

Was Connery really done with the world of fi lm, or was this yet another transitional marker in one of entertainment’s most illustrious careers? What kind of beacon of light did patronage of the Edinburgh festival represent? Hannah McGill, the festival’s new artistic director, speaks of Connery’s continued "year- round advocacy" for the festival. He is, she says, particularly interested in UK fi lm and fussy about details. "He told me last year that I tended to squeak on the mic and needed to speak from deeper in my chest. So I have been diligently smoking in the hope of acquiring more gravelly and authoritative tones."

Sean Connery’s love of fi lm equals his love of Scotland and has its roots in his childhood. Tom Cruise’s early life, as the son of a penniless and neglectful father, is often mooted as the model of adversity. But it pales alongside the deprivations Connery experienced. Fountainbridge, the Edinburgh tenement where he was born, comprised two-room accommodations without running water or toilet facilities. Yet the Connerys considered themselves lucky; they numbered just four: mum and dad Effi e and Joe, Tommy (his birth name) and baby brother Neil. Effi e worked as a charlady, Joe as a van driver. Money was so tight that young Sean was obliged to work as a milkman’s assistant on a horse- drawn cart from the age of 10. In Neil’s memory it was Sean’s love for horses that reminded him of the John Wayne westerns he spent his pocket money on, that opened the doorway to escape from the tenement life. "I was always surprised that he didn’t make more westerns," says Neil. "Horses meant the world to him."

The notion of escape dominated Connery’s teen life. He fled to his maternal grandparents’ mallholding in Fife; he joined the Navy; he played Junior League football with an eye on the big time. One resident of a next-door "stair", as the tenements were called, remembers seeing Connery on the local green, running day and night. "He looked like a gazelle, like he was trying to run out of his own skin." Neil remembers how Tommy fi nally found the formula: "He discovered that money and education were the real escape options. Both were available to him in the world of entertainment."

Connery’s journey through fi lm refl ects his appetite for self-education. "The great privilege of fi lm-making," he once said, "is visiting other countries and seeing the world through others’ eyes." This appetite for experience manifests itself in the peerless range of his work. In early movies like Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People (which fi rst took him to Hollywood) and The Frightened City, he specialised in playing Irishmen and indeed it was his portrayal of an Irish cop, in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables in 1987, that won him an Academy Award. Variety, however, was clearly the great motivator. In the post-Bond years his movies took him to the Middle-East (The Next Man), the Arctic (The Red Tent), Scandinavia (Ransom), Africa (The Man Who Would Be King ), Russia (The Russia House), Japan (Rising Sun) and the jungles of South America (Medicine Man).

The scope of Connery’s work is matched by his unusual longevity. John Boorman calls him "the eternal leading man", which hints at the paradox enshrined in his image. Unlike, for instance, Richard Burton, who defi ed the ageing process and dyed his hair till the end, Connery almost rushed into old age. Balding since his teens, he was happy to discard the James Bond wig as early as Marnie, made in 1963. Co-star Tippi Hedren recalls attending a screening in mid-production and wondering who the bald, inconspicuous man in the corner was. "`That’s Sean,’ Hitch told me, and I was stunned. On set he was ultra-glamorous, but he was happy to be Joe Average." Still, in 1998 aged 68 he was voted the Sexiest Man Alive by an American magazine and, the next year, cast as Catherine Zeta-Jones’ love interest in the sexy Entrapment. "I’ll tell you how Sean accomplishes that," says his friend Michael Caine. "It’s down to authenticity. There is nothing phoney about any aspect of what he projects and women embrace that."

Connery’s many triumphs, from his multi-fi lm awards to his 2000 knighthood, are well known, but his commitment to movies as an educational medium is less reported. His fi rst acting coach was

Robert Henderson, an American working at Kew’s Q Theatre during the 1950s. Shortly before his death, Henderson told me that James Bond was the worst thing that could have happened to him. When they fi rst met, working side by side in the touring South Pacifi c in 1955, Henderson had given Connery a list of books to formalise his self-education. "Very quickly he was quoting Shakespeare to me," recalls Henderson. "His whole being was lifted.

He said to me, `I understand now. Within these books are the keys to philosophy, politics, social issues. Everyone should read these.’" When he made his fi rst substantial earnings from Bond ­ £1 million for 1972’s Diamonds Are Forever ­ he donated it to the education trust for underprivileged kids founded by himself and the industrialist Sir Iain Stewart. "But that act of generosity and the calculated strategy behind it was never properly understood," said Henderson. "The hype surrounding James Bond overshadowed it, and people spoke about the charity as a tax dodge, which couldn’t have been further from the truth."

Misconceptions about Connery are easy and they are a consequence of the fl oodtide of Bond publicity. Roger Moore once told me the hardest part of being Bond was coming up with fresh responses to the same intrusive questions. "You inevitably just muddle your way through," said Moore. And Connery muddled. "Sean wouldn’t know how to tell a lie if you drew him a diagram," his old fl atmate Ian Bannen famously said of him. The corollary was a gush of knee-jerk responses ­ often intended as wit ­ that have been distorted by history.

The allegations of an overly parsimonious nature are particularly ungrounded. It has been said that Connery resented the wealth of the original Bond producers, Broccoli and Saltzman, and refused even to attend the November 1996 Leicester Square industry remembrance for Broccoli in protest. But this, as Connery told The Sunday Telegraph , is all a question of point of view. Today, actors like Tom Cruise, George Clooney and Brad Pitt routinely pocket fees above $20 million per movie. In total, for six fi lms spanning a decade, Connery received less than $2 million for James Bond . A griping moment, in this context, seems hardly unreasonable.

The commitment to Scotland, and the promotion of education and opportunity, have also been misrepresented. Andrew Fyall, a close Edinburgh friend who helped co-ordinate the Freedom of the City award coverage in 1991, was emphatic that the city honour meant more to Connery than any Hollywood statuette. Conversely, the feature that appeared in a Scottish daily as the award was granted hurt him more than any bad movie review. It stated that Connery avoided Scotland to dodge taxes, and questioned his charity work. "Sean was livid," said Fyall, "because he has always been a world traveller and he pays his taxes when he works here. More important, he has constantly promoted Scotland and put money into Scottish charities. For example, he took $250,000 for a day’s work on Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves , solely to donate the cash evenly between his education trust, Dundee Cancer and Heriot-Watt and St Andrews universities."

In terms of personal wealth, Connery missed the big time, his career having peaked long before the mega-deals of the 1980s changed the power grid of the movie world massively in favour of the star. But does he need to court Hollywood for the cash? "No," said Fyall, "because he has always had his fi nger in some business pie: a bank partnership, a garage or a farm. But he’ll always go out on a limb to support a Scottish issue he cares about. Or he’ll go out on a limb for a good story."

Which brings us back to Indiana Jones and the disappointment experienced by fans with the blunt restatement of retirement in June. It is well known that Connery was disappointed by the failure of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen , which he judged a failure of expertise. No-one can question the record of Spielberg and Lucas and, indeed, Connery’s statement emphasised: "If anyone could have lured me out of retirement, it was this movie." Is this really his fi nal word? One recalls Michael Caine’s assessment of his character ­ "He is not a quitter, he’s a competitor" ­ and the promises at the end of the 1960s never to reprise James Bond, reversed in the aptly titled 1982 revival, Never Say Never Again.

The cameras on Indiana Jones 4 will be rolling as the Edinburgh Film Festival kicks off. Will Connery surprise us with a last-minute reconsideration? The organisers can’t yet confi rm if Connery will be present this year. Hannah McGill and her team are busy focusing on the mechanics of what has become a highlight of the Scottish cultural year.

"Our current project," says McGill, "is to refi ne and push what we’re best at ­ the programmes. I want Edinburgh to be a crucial event for industry and fi lm buffs alike ­ great fun, but also a place where introductions are made and projects kicked off. As far as the public audience goes, it’s crucial to keep listening to them and providing the kind of fi lms that they respond to." That audience would no doubt respond well to the news that the festival patron has another movie or two up his sleeve.

The 61st Edinburgh International Film Festival takes place from 15-26 August; www.edfi lmfest.org.uk