Interview with Sir Roger Moore by the Icelandic television - December 2005

It is a very interesting and moving interview with Sir Roger explaining his introduction to UNICEF 15 years ago, and his reasoning for his continual high-level support of the organisation. © www.ruv.is

Hello Sir Roger and thank you for being on the programme.

Thank you for having me.

As a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF you've traveled around places of poverty I think you once said you deeply regretted ignoring those places in your acting career is that correct?

Absolutely correct I am filled with shame when I think of the opportunity I might have had but when you're on location with a film you are so involved with your own problems like your diet, where is the thunder box, and basically all the things necessary to make the film. Is my shirt dry, as James Bond you mustn't appear to sweat so you must have a dry shirt I must have had more dry shirts than you had hot meals (much laughing).

Why did you go into the business of UNICEF ?

I had a dear friend Audrey Hepburn, I had known her since my early 20s. We became neighbours in Switzerland, and she phoned me one day and asked me to co-host in Amsterdam the Danny Kaye International children's awards on television. I said I would do it, on May the 7th but she said come a day early, I think May 6th for the press conference. I said I don't know enough about UNICEF to handle press conference, and she they will only want to talk about movies. She was right, they did only want to talk about movies, but she would not help them, she reverted every question back to children and their problems, what we should be doing about it, and what we are doing about it, she would not help them. It was her passion and her extraordinary eloquence, that made me feel I had to learn more. But I could only learn from pamphlets and statistics and facts and figures there were no faces no names . I had to find those faces and names. The statistics were 40,000 children die every day and no names, and so I went off to have a look, and once you have looked, you say this is what I have to do.

And do you feel you can move things personally along in the organization have you experienced that?

Well you know sometimes when you finish an appeal, you wonder about the response and you say somebody must have heard the message and it might have got through, they may not have been listening, but if you speak loud enough they listen.

And do you feel that you can use your face, your name, and career to push things forward?

Without having had some success as a film and television actor, I would not be known, if I was going out as Peter Smith of the local bakery, I would not get any time, you would not have me on this program, there would be no reason, it is only curiosity a lot of the time, they think let's see if this actor knows what he's talking about and if he is sincere. So the curiosity level is very important when you want to go out and meet politicians, it helps to open doors because I found they all have wives and children who may have also seen television programmes. So what you do is sit down and weave your way through the movie questions, and then get down to the issues of what you're in the country for.

I know you once said that people only wanted to talk about the movies when you wanted to promote the cause is that the case everywhere? And that people keep coming back to the old clichés ?

No not always after 15 years people get used to that's what I do I am a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and are there to raise money and awareness.

What is the worst place, the worst scenario that you've experienced?

They're so numerous, long before I became an ambassador for UNICEF I was what they call a Barker for the variety club of Great Britain, and they raise money mainly for coaches for handicapped children and one of the things they asked me to do was go to a burns hospital in East Grimstead which was started during the Second World War for plastic surgery. Archibald Macindoe who was the leading plastic surgeon rebuilding pilots and gunners faces in air wrecks that were burnt and after the war a lot of children went there. And when I went there what was one of the first sensations as I got near to the hospital was this odd smell in the air which I discovered was the smell of burning flesh. It's like singeing the hair on a piece of pig skin its an awful clawing smell. Then years and years later in Salvador we were going to the Children's Hospital and I had the sensation I knew what I was going to see, the burning. There were things I did not expect to see, they were expecting a cholera epidemic and there was a room that was just a giant sluice, there was a room without beds there were troughs for people just waiting to be hosed down, and I thought my goodness me. I'm prepared for anything now, but I wasn't prepared for the next room there was a child with three limbs missing and this child was propped on a pillow making a humming sound and she had lost her limbs in a mine accident her sister had been killed she had trod on a landmine. The doctor said I don't think she knows what's happened, she's in a world of her own and when she comes out of that world God knows what will happen! And then in the next room there were children that had been burnt either through men's stupidity, men's greed, the desire to make weapons of war, or the desire to create landmines, or create landmines that looked like toys! The children would pick them up and they would explode, the children would lose their eyesight or lose their limbs and the parents would sometimes be killed with these damn things. And then children dying of malnutrition and I mean this was all in one morning, so that was fairly heavy ! And then we went to a home which was created and supported by UNICEF, which was for street children who could come in and get their clothes washed or they might get a change of clothes and a meal. And also the opportunity to do some sums and basic arithmetic. But what they all wanted to do the children was to get a few pieces of wood together and make a box so they could make a living cleaning shoes on the street. And so after eating with those children and being completely humbled by the experience. A wonderful Norwegian who was a field officer for UNICEF Per Engelbak, translated for me because it was all in Spanish, and my Spanish is not that good, he said at one point there were many times when I, found it very difficult to say what I was being told, he said I thought after 20 years with UNICEF I would be hardheaded. And I said I think that's the answer Per, that when you become hard headed, you get out, and I've never met anybody who wanted to get out of UNICEF.

And so what you experienced as James Bond was nothing, compared to this?

James Bond was a script and I won all the fights. This is the battle that is very difficult to win.

Turning a little to your acting career right at the end, I think what you brought to the role of James Bond I think everybody agrees was a kind of lightness and humor was that your intention all the time?

I couldn't believe it was a real spy, how can you be a real spy and go to any bar in the world and they say a Martini shaken not stirred ! and hello Mr. Bond, everybody recognizes you ! That is not a spy, a spy is like the jackal. In fact the producer of The Day of The Jackal wanted me to do it. Mr. Wolf, but the director did not. And I met the director Freddie Zimmerman a couple of years later at a dinner in Paris and I said I was very upset at the time you wouldn't have me, and he said there was a very good reason you were too well known as The Saint, you're too tall, you wouldn't be able to walk through a crowd unrecognised, and this is what we wanted for the jackal which is why we got Edward Fox to do it.

I want to show your clip which is 40 years old because this is not the first interview you've done on Icelandic television.

40 years old! But I'm only 28 says Roger jokingly to much laughter.

The clip It was taken on the streets of London you can see Piccadilly in the background with an Icelandic interviewer doing the commentary introduction

Question on the clip: was how long have you been playing Simon Templar ?

About five years now I've done 104 episodes.

Will they be making more?

They may do, at the moment we're preparing a script to make a film, in September which will be a saint film for the cinema.

Sir Roger is then asked to finish the interview by saying this famous line

I'll have a job remembering it, but I'll try, my name is Bond, James Bond.

Sir Roger Moore it was a pleasure, thank you !

Thank you, and remember the children of UNICEF. Sir Roger Moore