Actor Roger Moore, the comedic James Bond, dies at 89
Moore, born in London, had been acting throughout the 1940s and 1950s, mostly in obscurity, before joining the U.S. TV series
Maverick as the English-accented cousin to the Maverick brothers (the end result of some convoluted casting to reduce the workload of its star, James Garner). His first long-term role was that of Simon Templar in an adaptation of
The Saint, which ran for seven years; he continued to hold roles on shorter-lived TV series throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.
In 1973, after George Lazenby declined to continue in the role of James Bond and Sean Connery also retired from the role, Moore was cast as the star of the franchise. Moore would star in seven Bond films over the next twelve years, beginning with
Live and Let Die and ending with
A View to a Kill in 1985. Moore's portrayal of Bond was slightly more camp and comic compared to the mostly straight approach taken by his predecessors, which can largely be credited to the film writers, who took a more 1970s-oriented approach to the original Ian Fleming stories.
Moore was not above self-parody, appearing as an impostor of himself in
The Cannonball Run.
He mostly retired from acting, other than a few bit parts in a mini-career renaissance in the 1990s and early 2000s, after his Bond tenure. A staunch political conservative, Moore fled the UK's tax laws and resided in Switzerland and then Monaco during the last years of his life; despite this, the British Crown knighted him in 1999. He was also, much like his signature character, a profound womanizer, married four times in his life and having affairs with numerous other women during his lifetime.
Moore died in Monaco May 23, with the cause of death identified as cancer; Moore also had diabetes and health problems in the last years of his life. He is the first actor to play Bond in the film series to die; his predecessors and successors all survive.
Obituary from the BBCWikipediaIMDB entry
