007? It was all a big joke to Moore

Roger Moore and his Swedish wife Kristina Tholstrup at an international horse show in Germany in 2013. PHOTO: EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

WASHINGTON • In a career that seemed impervious to critical drubbing, Roger Moore owed his enduring box-office appeal to exceptionally good looks, terrific luck and a self-deprecating charm.

The English actor, who died from cancer at age 89 on Tuesday in Switzerland, became an international star in playboy-adventurer roles, first on the hit 1960s television series, The Saint, and later for his tongue-in-cheek film portrayal of dashing spy James Bond.

Sean Connery helped launch the Bond movies spun off from Ian Fleming's novels with Dr. No in 1962 and defined the role for many viewers.

Moore was the oldest Bond ever hired for films in the canon, taking on the role when he was 46. He was also the longest-running Bond - starting with Live And Let Die (1973) and ending six films later with A View To A Kill (1985).

A London policeman's son, Moore credited his mother with ridding him of a working-class accent that might have impeded his portrayal of the supremely cultured Bond. "She was very particular about behaviour and manners and the way you treated people," he once said. "I got a clip round the ear if I said 'ain't'. "

He began performing on-screen in his teens. Despite limited dramatic training, he was propelled to Hollywood stardom by his dazzling blue eyes and enviable blond bouffant. Film critic Rex Reed once wrote that Moore was frequently "prettier than his leading ladies".

He became a leading man in the 1950s, although in often preposterous roles that haunted him for years. In the Lana Turner costume drama Diane (1956), he played a 16thcentury French prince with all the elan of what one reviewer described as "a lump of English roast beef".

Claiming he wanted to beat the critics to the punch, Moore frequently made light of his limitations. "My acting range?" he once quipped. "Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised."

From 1962 to 1969 he was Simon Templar, the title character of The Saint, a wildly popular British series about a smooth-talking thief. For Moore, Bond was Templar on a grander scale and more satiric.

"My contention about my 'light' portrayal of Bond is this: How can he be a spy, yet walk into any bar in the world and have the bartender recognise him and serve him his favourite drink?" he asked in his 2008 memoir, My Word Is My Bond, written with Gareth Owen. "Come on," he continued, "it's all a big joke."

Starting with Moore, the series relied increasingly on gadgetry and cartoonish excess, such as when Bond jumps across the backs of snapping alligators in Live And Let Die, performs a corkscrew car jump over a broken bridge in The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) and skis off a cliff in the opening of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

Connery once told an interviewer that he had tried to imbue the character with "credibility" and some of the wilder scenarios with "indigenous humour". Moore, he maintained, went "for the laugh or the humour at whatever the cost of the credibility or the reality. He acquired an entirely different audience".

Indeed, Moore's Bond was cheered in theatres and it made fortunes for the producers and for the actor. Faced with the question of who played the better Bond, Moore told an interviewer in 2013, "Sean Connery played him as a killer and I'm a lover. I tried to be different - but it involved acting, unfortunately."

Roger George Moore was born in London on Oct 14, 1927. After leaving high school at 15, he briefly worked as an apprentice at a cartoon studio before being fired for tardiness. He became a movie extra and, while playing a Roman centurion in Caesar And Cleopatra (1945), was spotted by thenassistant director Brian Desmond Hurst.

Hurst paid for his tuition at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

In 1953, Moore accompanied his then-wife, Welsh-born pop singer Dorothy Squires, on a United States tour and found work in live television before winning a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios.

Dropped from his MGM contract after the debacle of Diane, he was soon picked up by Warner Bros and received star billing in pictures such as The Miracle (1959) and Gold Of The Seven Saints (1961). On television, he played a gold prospector in the adventure series The Alaskans (1959-1960) and was a guest star on Maverick (1959-1961), the western starring James Garner as vagabond gambler Bret Maverick.

He had long been a friend of Bond producers Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman and he said they called him one day to offer him the job previously held by Connery and George Lazenby. The only requirements were that he lose some weight, gain some muscle and trim his hair.

"I started working out like bloody mad and starving and getting my hair cut," he later told Entertainment Weekly. "I finished up saying, 'Couldn't you get a thin, bald man to start with?'"

In interviews, Moore described an often-stormy personal life and alluded to his roving eye and propensity to shy away from conflict. He ended his third marriage, to Italian actress Luisa Mattioli, via a phone call after more than 30 years together. His earlier marriages, to Britain-born skating star Doorn van Steyn and singer Squires, also ended in divorce.

Survivors include his Swedish wife Kristina Tholstrup and three children from his third marriage.

To escape England's high tax rate, Moore had homes in Switzerland and Monaco. One of his Swiss neighbours, the late actress and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn, got him involved with Unicef, the United Nations agency focused on children's health and safety. In 1991, he became a Unicef goodwill ambassador and helped raise more than US$90 million for a campaign to eliminate iodine deficiency.

For his charitable work, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003. Speaking of his UN engagement, he once told the Daily Telegraph: "It's about the only thing I've ever done that's of any use, really."

WASHINGTON POST, NYTIMES

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on May 25, 2017, with the headline 007? It was all a big joke to Moore. Subscribe