Our story of the month: February 2006

It is flattering to be invited by Roger Moore to sit in his prime table in the bar of the five-star L'Hermitage hotel in Monte Carlo overlooking the Mediterranean to watch the eclipse of the Sun, so I ask why the event interests him. "It doesn't at all. It's a big hype. Christina [his companion] is watching it on television in our apartment."

"The last one happened the year I was born. It was a sign." Of what? He pauses, smiles, and replies deadpan, "Of a total eclipse of the Sun." Handsome at 72, on October 14, dark-haired ("It is not dyed. My father lived to 93, and never had a grey hair"), dressed in a neat blazer decorated with his roving ambassador UNICEF style he is elusive and skittish, offering jokes and quips in place of conversation. The first thing he tells me is that Joan Collins just telephoned. "'Darling,"' he mimics, "'Are you going to watch it from your boat?" I told her, "No, I've got to do this boring interview." He actually expands on the boring with an expletive - he swears a lot, which even in these days of equal opportunity and vulgarity seems odd with his sardonic delivery and urbane demeanour. "I've said everything," he sighs. "There's nothing left except 'goodbye'."

This is untrue if only because he gives so few interviews, and has raised self deprecation to a suspect art form, claiming a reticence not noticeable in his screen persona. "I didn't become an actor to show off. It's a question of hiding in public behind someone else." "In the early days I was so shy I'd starve rather than go into a restaurant on my own. I built a wall of defence and invented this character - Roger Moore." So I'm talking to a figment of his imagination? That wry look again. "Yes, you might as well go and find the real one - if he exists. Maybe he does. I don't know. When I was married to Dorothy Squires I played Henry II opposite Lana Turner in a film called Diane. I came home one evening and dinner wasn't ready, so l said to Squires, 'Where is it?' and she replied, 'don't you come the King Henry with me.'"

His best friend, Michael Caine, believes he never tested himself as an actor because he's so good-looking. "Not quite true", he says. "I had to remember lines like, 'My name is Bond.'"

"I'm attacked for not acting, but in actual fact it is acting because I'm being heroic - something I'm not at all in real life. I find it much easier to hide behind a nose, moustache or funny accent. I'd love to have played Quasimodo, but no one would let me. They didn't appreciate my talent. I don't care. It's a serious business, but never look as if you're taking it seriously." Even a tribute is viewed with lively scepticism. Best of British [a film profile] is a double entendre. It could mean what it says, which is rather nice, or 'Up yours'. In my case I think it means 'Up yours'."

Success has provided him with homes in Monte Carlo (summer), and Crans Montana, Switzerland (winter) - which to some might seem like a hideous existence amongst the arrogant and officious. "I prefer to call it security. You don't live in dread of someone coming through the window and lifting your jewellery. The police here are rightly suspicious of cars from an area where there's a possibility of thieves. They want to guard against an invasion of the underworld."

He hasn't lived in Britain since 1978, presumably for tax reasons. "Tax? Who would discuss things like that? I always thought I'd like to spend winters in the sunshine until I fell in love with skiing when I was 50, which was brave since I'm a coward. At the same time my accountant said it would be propitious for me to leave England because I was beginning to make a little money and giving it all back - tax was 83 percent. It was a wise move and I've never regretted it. I don't feel disloyal because I pay taxes wherever I work."

Born in Stockwell, south London, he is the only son of a policeman and a strict mother, Lily, who taught him good manners.

It is difficult to believe that as a child he was overweight and withdrawn. "My father called me a sack of shit tied up ugly in the middle." He dropped out of school at 15 and worked as an apprentice in an animated cartoon studio before becoming an extra on Cesar and Cleopatra, where he was spotted by a director who sponsored him through RADA. In 1945 he was called up for National Service, as an officer ("Because I spoke posh. I was a poseur") and the following year, aged 19, married ice skater Doorn van Steyn.

"It wasn't difficult financially until I was released from service at 21 and returned to the ugly realities of a poor bloody actor with my arse kicked around. I did think of staying in the army." Maybe the marriage broke up because he wanted to be saluted by his wife. "No," he says, and leaves a silence hanging. He earned 1.50 pounds an hour as a knitting-pattern Model.

Then made several forgettable films. "I suffered a very bad diet for a number of years earning nine quid a week in rep. I lived off baked beans on toast. Some days I had the choice of a packet of cigarettes, baked beans or getting a bus to the West End instead of walking. At those times you wonder, 'Why struggle with being an actor?' But I never wanted to give up. When I look back on my career I feel terribly lucky. Is it getting darker, or is it my imagination?"

In 1953 he married singing star Dorothy Squires. She was 38, more than a decade his senior. He went to Hollywood the next year to make The Last Time I Saw Paris with Elizabeth Taylor and became contracted to MGM, who airbrushed the mole on his left cheek from publicity pictures and capped his teeth. Lana Turner complimented him on his kissing, although she found it too enthusiastic.

"Diane was such a camp film with terrible dialogue. When my father dies I say to her, 'You made me a prince. Now make me a king,' and put my tongue down her throat. Fortunately her teeth were in the way no, no, no, you don't kiss like that. But I was passionate and thought, 'l am kissing Lana Turner,' my first screen kiss. She said, 'Roger, when a lady gets to a certain age [she was 35] we worry about our chins, so don't push on them so much.'"

He left Hollywood for Italy in 1960, where he was miscast as Romulus in The Rape of the Sabine Women, but did at least meet his third wife, Luisa. Dorothy refused him a divorce for seven years, but he and Luisa eventually married in 1969 and had three children: Deborah, 35, Geoffrey, 33, and Christian, 26. It was thought to be an unusually happy showbiz: marriage until 1993, when he had an operation for prostate cancer. "I could have done without it, but I wasn't scared at the time. I stepped back, looked at my life, and decided to revaluate my place on the planet, change things a little. And I did so rather dramatically, which is all I'm going to say about that." There was shock, horror and tabloid scandal when he left Luisa for Christina, then 54, a former neighbour in the south of France and widow of a Danish industrialist. (Christina is also a cancer survivor, having had a double mastectomy.) Two years ago, he attempted to divorce Luisa in Switzerland but the judge refused, saying it should be referred to the English courts. This month they will have been separated for five years and he can get an uncontested divorce.

"People should mind their own [another expletive] business. I can't bear the excuses journalists give: 'Actors are public figures, so must be public knowledge.' I don't wish to know how often the Prime Minister does his number ones, nor how often he and Cherie - or is it Cheryl? - get up to it. Some stars flaunt fame and are devoted to seeing their names in the papers. I loathe that type of publicity and hate gutter journalism. I blew my cool once and gave them the finger. I regret it but you can't believe the provocation I've had. In London, they chased my car from Belgravia to Westminster and leapt out when I stopped at a traffic light. I think they are [he muses a word to denote those who have sexual congress with their mothers], to put it frankly. I'm quite sure The Sun, and The Mirror would lift the lid off my coffin and ask, 'Do you have anything to say before they put you under?' But I do think if something petty pisses me off, I should step back and ask, 'What are you going on about? You're healthy, with enough f-you money in the bank."

"I used to let them upset me, and suffered from nerves. That's why I had a duodenal ulcer when I first went to Hollywood. Ridiculous. I don't remember becoming a twinkle-twinkle [star overnight because it all happened gradually - eight years with The Saint from 1962, as Simon Templar, A year and a bit of Ivanhoe, two television series in America - The Alaskans and Maverick.] It's like one of those suspicious little moles that start on your arm and gradually become bigger and are diagnosed as melanoma. I am the melanoma of society." He starred with Tony Curtis in The Persuaders! on TV, but it was not as successful, so he was free to succeed Sean Connery as Bond, starting with Live and Let Die in 1973. He made seven pictures ending with A View to a Kill in 1985. "People asked if I worried about taking over. Why should I? Christ, 4,000 actors play Hamlet - good, bad or indifferent. Of course the films were chauvinist. I was attacked by a number of ladies on a talk show and said, 'You're wearing lipstick. Is that for the benefit of yourself, for men, or other women?' I come from a different generation to this politically correct lot. There were only a couple of scenes I don't think I should have done - one is in The Man with the Golden Gun when I'm trying to get the truth out of Maud Adams. I kiss her, bend her arm and tell her I'll break it unless she tells me. It was obviously wrong. And there was another where a kid is on a sampan with me and when he's fixed the motor I knock him over the side. I'm horrified when I think of that."

"My favourite was The Spy Who Loved Me - everything was right. I always played the part for laughs. How can he be a real spy if he's recognised in every bar in the world as the fellow who drinks martinis, shaken not stirred? My attitude was to share the joke with the audience. I enjoyed the work, but they weren't really my type of movie, not something I'd pay 3s 9d to watch - you can ether last time I went to the cinema. Now I get in free. It occurred to me the other day that when you haven't got a toss, you don't get anything. But today I go into restaurants or hotels and they say, 'It's a pleasure having you. It's on the house' I can't believe it."

He hasn't seen any subsequent Bond films, and only watched his own films because he was obliged to attend premieres. He's a bit of a stop-at-home, he adds, and doesn't even plan to celebrate the turn of the millennium. "The best new year I had was four years ago in London, when I went to bed at half-past eight and watched Strictly Ballroom - the sort off film I like - and was asleep before midnight. I can't stand all those people blowing things in your ear." Most of his time is spent working for UNICEF but he has a cameo in movies now and again. He was a record company director, The Chief, in Spiceworld. "I was on set for one day, not with the girls, but with a pig. I've worked with many of those in my time." He is now returning to television in an updated version of the seventies series Charlie's Angels, called The Dream Team, in which he plays the director of a group of agents disguised as fashion models. He has two or three scenes in each show, filmed in Monte Carlo.

There has been the occasional disaster. In 1989 he pulled out of the lead in Aspects of Love four weeks before the opening. "I was suspicious from the start, but Andrew Lloyd Webber convinced me, and I was flattered anyone thought I could do more than say 'My name is Bond,' and raise one eyebrow. Nowadays I wish I'd been a doctor, and really done good for people. Apart from that, I could treat myself and save a lot of money." He is, I understand, a hypochondriac. "No. A hypochondriac is someone who thinks he's sick. I know I am."

An elegant middle-aged woman introduces herself and recalls, "We met at the Opera House in Paris a long time ago with Liza Minnelli and Frank Sinatra. You sat in front of me and I said, 'What a big strong man you are,' and you replied, 'Yes, indeed I am.' Now I see you in a daylight you really are. Can I ask a stupid question: can I have a picture taken with you?" "Sure," he drawls, and then winks at me. I wonder if the suave exterior camouflages a bit of a cad. He smiles.

"I'm not going to lose sleep over it but I think I've been a cad. Gosh, what happened to the eclipse? Did we miss it? What an anticlimax. Goodbye."

© Andrew Duncan 1999

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August - September - October - November - December 2003

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January 2006