In the 1960s, Sean Connery was ranked with the likes of John Wayne, Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, Tony Curtis and Paul Newman - stars whose name on the marquee could make a movie bankable.

Of that group, he was, until Saturday (Oct 31), one of its last survivors.

The Scottish actor had gone from playing bit parts in British movies in the 1950s to becoming a global brand for playing James Bond, becoming the first Agent 007 in Dr No (1962), and would go on to play the super-spy six more times between 1962 and 1983.

Connery's Bond was a new kind of Cold War warrior. He was cruel and violent in the old-fashioned sense, but he was also a man of the Swinging '60s, and had no qualms taking advantage of the sexual revolution taking over the West.

His physical presence helped make the Bond movies a hit, while the spy thrillers turned him into a box office draw over the decade. The pressure of fame got to him, he admitted.

"The only comparison would be The Beatles, but there were four of them to kick it around," he told American journalist Barbara Walters in 1987.

His star dimmed post-Bond, but he proved he could still land good roles, many in support of younger leads. Over the 1970s and 1980s, he worked steadily, each role marked by his much-mimicked Edinburgh accent.

In his 2008 autobiography, Being A Scot, he wrote about how an actor friend advised him to get rid of his accent as it made him hard to understand and handicap his range as an actor. He was able to tone it down as the role demanded, but could never get rid of it completely.

Such was his charisma and status that he could get away with playing a Russian submarine commander in the espionage thriller The Hunt For Red October (1990) or an Irish-American police officer in the period crime thriller The Untouchables (1987), and not take too much flak for the accent.

Indeed, he would win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing officer Jim Malone in The Untouchables. It was his only nomination, and only Oscar win. The same role would earn him a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor.

For playing Henry Jones, the father of the title character in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (1989), he would get a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

While his Bond movies might not have aged well because of their racist and misogynistic ideas, his later work holds up.

With his silver-streaked beard and rumbling voice, he became the actor to call whenever an action movie or thriller needed someone to play the leading character's mentor or father.

In movies like fantasy adventure Highlander (1986), escape flick The Rock (1996) a new generation of movie-goers became familiar with him as the actor who gave lightweight movies some much-needed ballast.

My generation grew up with the silver-bearded Connery, not the smooth-cheeked one who smacked women and shot Communists in the name of Western freedom in the 1960s.

For me, he will be remembered as Captain Marko Ramius, the aloof, principled Russian submarine commander in Red October and the incorruptible Jim Malone in The Untouchables.

If there was a movie that needed Connery's brand of dignity and understated sense of humour, it was The Rock. The elder actor instantly became the centre of gravity in every scene in which he appeared, giving the over-the-top picture some much-needed weight.

It was then that I learnt that action movies are not just about action. When he stopped working in the early 2010s, action movies - along with thrillers, epic fantasies and adventure flicks - lost one of its greatest anchoring forces.