007 wore a wig?

Is it true that Sean Connery wore a wig in all of his Bond films? If it is, what did he look like with the wig off? It certainly looks like he had more more hair in Never Say Never Again than he did in Diamonds Are Forever.
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  • Willie GarvinWillie Garvin Posts: 1,412MI6 Agent
    edited February 2009
    Quoting Ali Tait:
    Is it true that Sean Connery wore a wig in all of his Bond films? If it is, what did he look like with the wig off? It certainly looks like he had more more hair in Never Say Never Again than he did in Diamonds Are Forever.

    Yes,Sean Connery began losing his hair when he was in his late teens.And from the beginning of his acting career onward,he wore custom-made wigs.Connery used various hairpieces throughout his tenure as James Bond.They're all quite natural looking,and unless you're aware of them,they're difficult to spot.Conversely,the toupee Connery wears in Never Say Never Again is--in my opinion--the most obvious looking of all his wigs.

    To see how Sir Sean looks minus his wigs,check out the movie The Man Who Would Be King.Sean usually wears hair of some sort,but in this one he's bald.
  • kmartkmart Posts: 19MI6 Agent
    And to see how Connery's hairline looked DURING his Bond tenure, sans toupee, check out THE HILL from 65 and THE ANDERSON TAPES from 71.
    "Achievement is it's own reward - pride obscures it."
    Major Garland Briggs, in TWIN PEAKS
  • Doake18Doake18 Posts: 9MI6 Agent
    I beg to differ about the wig in NSNA. I feel that the most obvious bird's nest was in DAF. I have a hard time watching it b/c it's so obvious. What if Sir Sean had just gone bald for the pictures? Bond bald? It just doesn't fit into the male fantasy persona of JB.
  • PUCCINIPUCCINI Posts: 70MI6 Agent
    Hey man!! it seems that you are pretty new in this, you are a rokiee don't you? YES, Sean used to wear that...thing in Bond films since FRWL (1963)
  • Willie GarvinWillie Garvin Posts: 1,412MI6 Agent
    edited August 2003
    Quoting PUCCINI:
    Hey man!! it seems that you are pretty new in this, you are a rokiee don't you? YES, Sean used to wear that...thing in Bond films since FRWL (1963)

    Actually,Sean started wearing his toupees even earlier than in From Russia With Love.He's wearing one in Dr.No.It's probably the same one he wore on tv in the BBC productions of Requiem For a Heavyweight and Anna Karinina.Plus Tarzan's Greatest Adventure,Action of the Tiger(directed by future Bond master Terence Young) and the Disney movie Darby O'Gill and the little people.Sean began balding at an early age...;)

    W.G.
  • Ali TaitAli Tait Posts: 7MI6 Agent
    Cheers for the replies folks!

    Was Sean a complete slaphead by the time of NSNA then?
  • Willie GarvinWillie Garvin Posts: 1,412MI6 Agent
    edited August 2003
    Quoting Ali Tait:
    Cheers for the replies folks!

    Was Sean a complete slaphead by the time of NSNA then?

    Hmm...Not bald at the sides or back of the head-just on top.Male pattern baldness.And incidentally,during the period Roger Moore played 007,he wore a small piece to conceal a bald patch at the crown of his head.This isn't a secret with him-like Connery,Sir Roger freely acknowledges his baldness-although in his case,it's considerablly less than Sir Sean's.

    Incidentally,wigs aren't new for movie stars:Humphrey Bogart wore a large toupee-so did David Niven,John Wayne(in his later years),Jimmy Stewart,Fred Astaire,and Gene Kelly.You just can't fight heredity,although a well-made wig can certainly conceal it...:)


    W.G.
  • Ali TaitAli Tait Posts: 7MI6 Agent
    Thanks for the info man.
  • Truman-LodgeTruman-Lodge Posts: 4MI6 Agent
    And the fact that he only had the sides of hair in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (1989) and then a full head of hair in Entrapment (1999?)

    Joe.
  • Willie GarvinWillie Garvin Posts: 1,412MI6 Agent
    edited August 2003
    Quoting Truman-Lodge:
    And the fact that he only had the sides of hair in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (1989) and then a full head of hair in Entrapment (1999?)

    Joe.
    In fairness Joe,Sean Connery was playing someone 20 years older than his actual age in Last Crusade.He and Harrison Ford are only seperated by about 13 years.By contrast,in Entrapment,Sean plays his real age and that's mentioned frequently throughout the film-especially by the much younger Catherine Zeta-Jones,whose character doesn't view it as a serious impediment to their romantic relationship.

    That's the beauty of wigs...when Mother Nature takes away your original hair,you can always buy more.John Wayne used to joke--when he was older and wearing toupees--that he had all of his own hair.It wasn't the hair he'd been born with-but it was real hair and it was all his.All bought and paid for.

    And certainly the amount of hair an actor has on his head has absolutely nothing to with determining the quality of his skill as a performer.Look at Yul Brynner,Telly Savalas and Patrick Stewart,and Samuel L.Jackson,for example.Excellent actors every one.

    While The Magnificent Seven was being filmed,Steve McQueen attempted to steal a scene from Yul Brynner.Brynner stopped that immediately,telling McQueen that,"All I(Brynner) have to do is take off my hat and no one will even look in your direction."

    By contrast,there are a multitude of hirsute actors who are completely without talent whatsovever.Sadly,we've all seen them more than once. ;)


    W.G.
  • JaelleJaelle Posts: 19MI6 Agent
    Quoting Willie Garvin:
    And certainly the amount of hair an actor has on his head has absolutely nothing to with determining the quality of his skill as a performer.Look at Yul Brynner,Telly Savalas and Patrick Stewart,and Samuel L.Jackson,for example.Excellent actors every one.

    Wow, you people are informative. I knew that Connery wore a hairpiece at some point in his Bond career but I had no idea it was as early as DN! Or as early as his pre-Bond career in Darby O'Gill!

    I've always thought Yul Brynner to be one of the sexiest men to ever walk the earth, and I always thought he looked more handsome and sexier bald than with hair! Same for Patrick Stewart. Great story about McQueen and Brynner on the set of Magnificent 7.
    Quoting Willie Garvin:
    By contrast,there are a multitude of hirsute actors who are completely without talent whatsovever.Sadly,we've all seen them more than once. ;)
    W.G.

    That list would be far too long....
  • Willie GarvinWillie Garvin Posts: 1,412MI6 Agent
    edited August 2003
    Surely by now Jaelle,you've come to the realization that I know everything-well,almost everything.:))

    Only joking of course,but I am a big movie and tv buff,and an active reader with broad interests.This is what happens after you double major in English and Humanities.:)) You're then qualified to be boring on a host of topics...

    Hey!Check out Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City-I really think you'll like it.

    That Yul Brynner story from The Magnificent Seven can be found on the Special Edition DVD.There are other great stories revealed in the documentary on the making of this wonderful film(why it didn't get Oscars,I'll never understand).For example,every one of the 7 stars thought the movie was all about them.Good thing they didn't have to walk through too many narrow doorways,huh?Their increasingly swollen heads would've gotten them stuck every time...;) ;)


    W.G.
  • kmartkmart Posts: 19MI6 Agent
    Quoting Willie Garvin:

    In fairness Joe,Sean Connery was playing someone 20 years older than his actual age in Last Crusade.He and Harrison Ford are only seperated by about 13 years.By contrast,in Entrapment,Sean plays his real age and that's mentioned frequently throughout the film-especially by the much younger Catherine Zeta-Jones,whose character doesn't view it as a serious impediment to their romantic relationship.

    I'm pretty sure Connery is playing at least 10 years YOUNGER than his actual age in ENTRAPMENT (in fact, I'd say that was the case with a number of the roles he has played since around the time of RED OCTOBER.) in ENT, Z-J has a discussion at one point with her superior and they say something to the effect that the guy is pushing 60, not 70.

    That's still a three-decade difference in their ages, but shows how convincingly you can now shave years with Connery, who after a rocky-looking prematurely old patch (1967-1973), seems to have settled in comfortably before locking into a look that just seems perpetually ageless.
    "Achievement is it's own reward - pride obscures it."
    Major Garland Briggs, in TWIN PEAKS
  • Willie GarvinWillie Garvin Posts: 1,412MI6 Agent
    I stand corrected,kmart.Whatever the age Connery is supposed to be in Last Crusade,it has to be old enough to be Ford's father,which of course is laughable,since Ford is playing,what?Five-six years younger than his real age?And there's a 13 year difference in the 2 actors respective ages-Ford turned 60 this month(Much as I enjoyed Raiders and Crusade I'm not exactly looking forward to Indy IV).

    And of course,you're right about Entrapment.Sean is playing younger.He did that in The Rock too-where he played a thinly disguised 007.Hey!Who doesn't if they can get away with it? ;) Sean Connery finally has found an "quasi-ageless" look,in the sense that he doesn't appear much older now,at age 73,in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen than he did in Hunt for Red October or even Medicine Man.


    W.G.
  • JaelleJaelle Posts: 19MI6 Agent
    From Willie:
    Quoting Willie Garvin:
    (Much as I enjoyed Raiders and Crusade I'm not exactly looking forward to Indy IV).

    Me neither. I really wanted Sean and Harrison to come back in a new Indy film but I just think Indy's time has come and gone.
    Quoting Willie Garvin:
    Sean Connery finally has found an "quasi-ageless" look,in the sense that he doesn't appear much older now,at age 73,in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen than he did in Hunt for Red October or even Medicine Man.
    W.G.

    So true. Sean was absolutely beautiful when he was very young, then looked awful in his mid-years and then blossomed all over again when he got older. Even today in his 70s, I find him far more attractive than many younger male stars. Not many aging actors can claim that distinction.
  • Ali TaitAli Tait Posts: 7MI6 Agent
    Yeah, I've seen a pic of him at the YOLT premier where he has a major receeder and a big drooping moustache. Doesna look to good!
  • Willie GarvinWillie Garvin Posts: 1,412MI6 Agent
    Quoting Ali Tait:
    Yeah, I've seen a pic of him at the YOLT premier where he has a major receeder and a big drooping moustache. Doesna look to good!

    That's true.Of course at that time,Sean was also preparing for his film Shalako,a western in which his character-a cavalry scout-wears long hair and a large moustache.:)

    W.G.
  • kmartkmart Posts: 19MI6 Agent
    Yeah, but even more than the moustache, there is something very hangdog about Connery in the late 60s/early 70s. Don't know if it had to do with his marriage dying or being single, but look at how in 1974 he picks up visually -- expressionwise anyway, since there is a light in his eyes there -- starting with THE WIND & THE LION. Compare that with MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, which I think is only several months or a year earlier, in which he is still looking like an aging banker or something.

    My wife often wonders if Connery had some real top of the line surgery in 74 and again in the mid to late 80s, but I'm more inclined to think it could be traced to emotional happiness (2nd marriage) or maybe even pride in craft, along with pride in the projects he began getting.

    I always consider WIND & THE LION to be the start of Connery as MORE THAN BOND (technically you could say that as far back as THE HILL, but starting with W&L, he has a pretty good streak including ROBIN & MARIAN and MAN WHO WOULD BE KING and a decent turn in BRIDGE TOO FAR before coming a cropper with METEOR and CUBA), or Connery Phase II. He really starts testing his limits in the 80s, and I think he kind of runs up against those limits in a scene in WRONG IS RIGHT (the scene with Robert Webber) and in PRESIDIO (the crying stuff), and he locked into a wider but credible range after that.

    If he had done Merlin in EXCALIBUR and/or Thulsa Doom in CONAN (as Boorman and Milius had intended), it is possible that the showiness of those roles -- especially Merlin -- would have pitched him into a near-self-parody category, sort of like what Shatner became.

    The Connery role that didn't happen which I most mourn is THE LAST HARD MEN, a end-of-western-era-western from the mid 70s where Heston wanted either Robert Shaw or Connery to play opposite him as a baddie, but they wound up with Coburn instead. I think Connery could have notched a really impressive villain at that point (maybe people would have actually gone to see the movie), and that would have widened his options (but also might have notched him in the 'aging star turns character actor' category.)
    "Achievement is it's own reward - pride obscures it."
    Major Garland Briggs, in TWIN PEAKS
  • Hugo DraxHugo Drax Leeds, United Kingdom.Posts: 210MI6 Agent
    I think that Sean Connery looks great with or without his toupee. But the hairpiece he wore in DAF did look a bit silly. In his Bond career there were tells when you can tell he's wearing one, such as in the pre-titles of TB, but it's mostly inconspicuous.

    After YOLT Connery did seem to age rapidly so that by the mid-1970s in films like The Man Who Would Be King, he doesn't look anything he did as Bond.

    At 73 Connery looks healthy and well and that's the most important thing. Wigs etc don't matter at all.
  • justvisitingjustvisiting Posts: 61MI6 Agent
    edited November 2003
    Quoting Willie Garvin:
    And incidentally,during the period Roger Moore played 007,he wore a small piece to conceal a bald patch at the crown of his head.This isn't a secret with him-like Connery,Sir Roger freely acknowledges his baldness-although in his case,it's considerablly less than Sir Sean's.

    I didn't know Roger Moore wore a piece? I am not surprised, but where did you learn that bit of information?
  • scaramanga74scaramanga74 Posts: 1MI6 Agent
    just checked out the hill and compared a still from that to a shot from thunderball and the rug becomes quite comical. in the hill his hair is really short and very thin on top not bald... but very thin you can see why the 00rug was called into active service
  • 72897289 Beau DesertPosts: 1,691MI6 Agent
    Just to set things straight about the "wigs" worn by "Big Tam"...

    He did not wear one in "Dr.No" that was his own hair while slopping through the water & steam pipes and throughout the rest of the film.

    In "From Russia with Love" SC was still using his own hair, but this time supplemented with paint on his scalp - an old but tried and true technique to help mask thinning hair.

    By "Goldfinger" it was "wig" time. He wears two different ones as the PTS hair is far better than the hairpiece in the rest of the film - which is a "Bing Crosby Special" easily visable on this model is the cheesecloth at the hairline. This toupee is a real stinker and in my view looks absolutely horrid!!

    In Thunderball. the toupee is slightly better styled, and comes and goes. Underwater you see SC's real hair, he also drops the toupee in the scenes just prior to getting in and out of the water.

    In "You Only Live Twice" for the hike up the volcano and the dive in the water previous - again SC doffs the wig.

    In "Diamonds Are Forever" the Toupee vanishes when SC takes a swim with Bambi and Thumper.

    In his last outing as oo7, NSNA - there is a shot of SC swimming after Largo in the conclusion in which the toupee is missing.

    All in all an interesting study in male pattern baldness - conducted over decades.

    8-)
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent
    7289 wrote:
    Just to set things straight about the "wigs" worn by "Big Tam"...

    He did not wear one in "Dr.No" that was his own hair while slopping through the water & steam pipes and throughout the rest of the film.

    8-)

    Name your source!
    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • HardyboyHardyboy Posts: 5,882Chief of Staff
    Actually, I once saw an interview with Connery where he said that he wore a "two-piece" on Dr. No. Needless to say, I don't have a reference, but I'm trusting my memory here.
    Vox clamantis in deserto
  • A7ceA7ce Birmingham, EnglandPosts: 655MI6 Agent
    well one thing we can say with Confidence is that the Brozzer never wore a syrup during his Bond tenure - he was the HairMaster. Even now in his mid 50s he's got a good barnett
  • 72897289 Beau DesertPosts: 1,691MI6 Agent
    With respect to the Connery interview, I saw that one - years ago. I believe he got "Goldfinger" and "Dr.No" confused. He also made reference to "painting" on hair in other interviews.

    Just watch Dr. No and pay attention to SC's hair. You can see scalp through it, and there is no cheesecloth border on the forehead, toupee technology was not that good in 1960.

    There are plenty of "off screen" photos of SC available that will document "Big Tam's" hair loss over the years. But I would think that would be a rather "daft" undertaking.

    For a subject of REAL depth, how about eyebrows?

    ;)
  • Sweepy the CatSweepy the Cat Halifax, West Yorkshire, EnglaPosts: 986MI6 Agent
    I always thought that this was quite well known across the fan-community :s

    TBH, no matter how hard I look, I can never really see where the hair ends and rug begins!
    207qoznfl4.gif
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent
    A7ce wrote:
    well one thing we can say with Confidence is that the Brozzer never wore a syrup during his Bond tenure - he was the HairMaster. Even now in his mid 50s he's got a good barnett

    To be honest, I think we should draw a veil over all this with more recent Bonds, it may be a tad disillusioning... :D
    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • 72897289 Beau DesertPosts: 1,691MI6 Agent
    I'd agree! Time to stop...

    Imagine what it was like being 10 years old during the thick of the 1960's Bond craze and hearing "James Bond wears a wig!", talk about devastation!

    I used to look at the back of my Goldfinger LP cover (not even stereo) and shake my head in disbelief.

    I survived though - but have developed a disdain for the use of "rugs".

    8-)
  • A7ceA7ce Birmingham, EnglandPosts: 655MI6 Agent
    edited February 2009
    A7ce wrote:
    well one thing we can say with Confidence is that the Brozzer never wore a syrup during his Bond tenure - he was the HairMaster. Even now in his mid 50s he's got a good barnett

    To be honest, I think we should draw a veil over all this with more recent Bonds, it may be a tad disillusioning... :D

    Hmmmm, I thought the post was titled '007 wore a wig?', not 'Connery wore a wig' ! ?:)[/quote]
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