Sean Connery's creation of secret agent James Bond invigorated Britain and its cinema, allowing a cash-strapped, morale-sapped country in decline to fancy itself still a player on the world stage. But while Bond would make Connery the first actor to command a million dollar-plus fee, the man himself was forever pouring scorn on the fantasies audiences found it increasingly hard to separate him from. How can such worship not play havoc with one s soul especially a soul as painfully unprepared for the pressures of stardom as Connery s? Undaunted, Connery went on to prove himself one of the cinema s most relaxed and assured stars and a guaranteed box-office draw. Molding and remolding his image to fit the contours of the age, Connery has gone from Sixties sex symbol to the sagacious figure to which today s young stars are forever turning. Spirited, argumentative and sardonically celebratory, Christopher Bray s Sean Connery is the story of an actor learning his craft on the job and, at the end of his career, of a man pressing his stardom into the service of his burgeoning political awareness.