![]() ![]() He gave no details, but said it was important to encourage young victims not to feel guilty. “I was molested when I was a child - not seriously - but I didn’t tell my mother until I was 16, because I felt that it was something to be ashamed of,” he told The Associated Press. In 1996, when his UNICEF job took him to the World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, he disclosed that he too had been a victim. “I felt small, insignificant and rather ashamed that I had traveled so much making films and ignored what was going on around me,” he said in describing how the work had affected him. As Hepburn had, he threw much of his energy into the task. In 1991, Moore became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, having been introduced to the role by the late actress Audrey Hepburn. His post-Bond films included such forgettable efforts as “The Quest” with Jean-Claude Van Damme and “Spice World” with the Spice Girls. He continued to work regularly in films after handing over Bond to Timothy Dalton, but never with the same success. And while the Bond of the Ian Fleming novels that the films were based on was generally described as being in his 30s, Moore would stay with the role until he was 57. He would make six more, “The Man With the Golden Gun,” ‘’The Spy Who Loved Me,” ‘’Octopussy,” ‘’Moonraker,” ‘’For Your Eyes Only and “A View to a Kill” over the next 12 years. Three years later, he made his first Bond film, “Live and Let Die.” With the company, he co-starred with Tony Curtis in “The Persuaders!” for British television and was involved in producing “A Touch of Class,” which won a best-actress Oscar for Glenda Jackson. In 1970, he became managing director for European production for Faberge’s Brut Productions. He appeared opposite Elizabeth Taylor in 1954’s “The Last Time I Saw Paris” and with Eleanor Parker in “Interrupted Melody” the following year. He played a few small roles in theater and films before his mandatory army duty, then moved to Hollywood in the 1950s. In the 1970s, film critic Vincent Canby would dismiss Moore’s acting abilities as having “reduced all human emotions to a series of variations on one gesture, the raising of the right eyebrow.”īorn in London, the only child of a policeman, Moore had studied painting before enrolling in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Such success followed a Time magazine review of one of his earliest films, 1956’s “Diane,” in which his performance opposite Lana Turner was dismissed as that of “a lump of English roast beef.” By the time the series, which also aired in the United States, ended in 1969, his partnership with its producers had made him a wealthy man. In England, he had a long-running TV hit with “The Saint,” playing Simon Templar, the enigmatic action hero who helps put wealthy crooks in jail while absconding with their fortunes. While he never eclipsed Sean Connery in the public’s eye as the definitive James Bond, Moore did play the role of secret agent 007 in just as many films as Connery did, and he managed to do so while “finding a joke in every situation,” according to film critic Rex Reed. So you have to treat the humor outrageously as well.” What kind of serious spy is recognized everywhere he goes? It’s outrageous. Every bartender in the world offers him martinis that are shaken, not stirred. “I mean, this man is supposed to be a spy and yet, everybody knows he’s a spy. “To me, the Bond situations are so ridiculous, so outrageous,” he once said. Moore’s relaxed style and sense of whimsy, which relied heavily on the arched eyebrow, seemed a commentary on the essential ridiculousness of the Bond films, in which the handsome British secret agent was as adept at mixing martinis, bedding beautiful women and ordering gourmet meals as he was at disposing of super-villains trying to take over the world. “We know our own love and admiration will be magnified many times over, across the world, by people who knew him for his films, his television shows and his passionate work for UNICEF, which he considered to be his greatest achievement,” the statement said. The British actor died Tuesday after a short battle with cancer, according to a family statement posted on Moore’s official Twitter account. LONDON - Roger Moore, the suavely insouciant star of seven James Bond films, has died in Switzerland. ![]()
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