Connery's Dramatic Range Outland

By 1981, when Sean Connery signed on for Outland (1981), he had spent nearly two decades working to get out from under Bond. The roles he took between franchise installments — a Kipling adventurer, an aging Robin Hood, a cop who kills a suspect with his hands — added up to a stronger dramatic filmography than most audiences gave him credit for.

Connery was already chafing against Bond by 1964

Connery's frustration with Bond surfaced early. By the Goldfinger premiere in 1964, he was skipping promotional events and negotiating exit terms with producers Harry Saltzman and Albert "Cubby" Broccoli. Every non-Bond role he took after that carried an implicit argument: that he could do more than what the franchise asked of him.

The Man Who Would Be King gave him a full arc with no trace of Bond

The Man Who Would Be King (1975), John Huston's adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling novella, paired Connery with Michael Caine as two former British soldiers who set themselves up as kings in Kafiristan. Both actors named it their favorite of their own films. Connery's Daniel Dravot starts swaggering, turns regal, and ends tragic — the kind of arc Bond never required of him. Huston had originally planned the project for Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable in the 1950s.

Robin and Marian established the weary-hero template he brought to Outland

Most leading men of Connery's generation resisted aging on screen. Connery went the other way. Robin and Marian (1976), Richard Lester's late-career Robin Hood picture, cast him opposite Audrey Hepburn as a Robin grown tired, scarred, and aware that his best years were behind him. The film lost money but set the pattern Connery kept returning to: the competent man who has outlived his moment. He plays the same note as Marshal O'Niel in Outland (1981), standing alone on Io for reasons he can no longer fully explain — the High Noon Parallels the film invites are partly about this.

The Offence cost one last Bond and was buried by the studio

The Offence (1973), directed by Sidney Lumet, is the Connery performance almost nobody has seen. He plays Detective Sergeant Johnson, a London policeman who beats a suspected child molester to death during interrogation and then has to face what the act says about him.

The film exists because of a deal Connery cut with United Artists to come back as Bond. After George Lazenby's single outing in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), UA needed Connery for Diamonds Are Forever (1971). The terms, negotiated with UA president David Picker: $1.25 million (then a record for a single picture), 12.5% of the gross, and a commitment from UA to finance two films of Connery's choosing at up to $2 million each, with final say on script and director. He donated the entire Bond fee to the Scottish International Educational Trust, a charity he had co-founded with Iain Hamilton and Sir Iain Stewart the year before.

Only one of the two promised films got made. Connery picked John Hopkins' stage play This Story of Yours, had Hopkins adapt it, and brought in Lumet to direct. The second project — reportedly a Macbeth — fell apart when Roman Polanski's version came out first.

"It was the deal I was proudest of. Not the money. The two pictures. The Offence was one of them, and it was worth every Bond I ever did." — Sean Connery, Sean Connery by Michael Feeney Callan (2002) (book, not available online)

UA buried the result:

"They opened it in two theatres, in the wrong cities, with no advertising, and then told us it had failed." — Sidney Lumet, Making Movies (1995) (book, not available online)

The burial was thorough enough that the film was unavailable in the United States for years. Pauline Kael, one of the few major American critics to review it on release, wrote:

"An astonishing piece of acting — the kind of exposed, self-lacerating work we are told movie stars cannot do, by people who have not been watching Sean Connery." — Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (April 9, 1973) (print, not verified online)

The performance is raw, ugly, and has no interest in protecting Connery's image.

The Name of the Rose pivoted him toward late-career character roles

The Name of the Rose (1986), adapted from Umberto Eco's novel, cast Connery as William of Baskerville, a 14th-century Franciscan friar investigating a series of deaths at a remote Italian abbey. The character is a medieval detective — skeptical and subversive in a world run by the Inquisition. The studio resisted the casting and the production was troubled, but the performance anchored his transition into character roles through the late 1980s.

The Untouchables Oscar rewarded fifteen years of quiet dramatic work

The Academy recognized him for The Untouchables (1987), where his Jim Malone — an aging Irish beat cop mentoring Kevin Costner's Eliot Ness — won Best Supporting Actor. The award landed on the same type of performance Connery had been giving for fifteen years. Malone is Daniel Dravot and the weary Robin Hood and Marshal O'Niel, played one more time with the same quiet authority. By 1987, Bond was behind him.