Trivia: One of the few movie "superstars" truly worthy of the designation, actor Sean Connery was born to a middle-class Scottish family in the first year of the worldwide Depression. Dissatisfied with his austere surroundings, Connery quit school at 15 to join the navy (he still bears his requisite tattoos, one reading "Scotland Forever" and the other "Mum and Dad"). Holding down several minor jobs, not the least of which was as a coffin polisher, Connery became interested in bodybuilding, which led to several advertising modeling jobs and a bid at Scotland's "Mr. Universe" title. Mildly intrigued by acting, Connery joined the singing-sailor chorus of the London roduction of South Pacific in 1951, which whetted his appetite for stage work. Connery worked for a while in repertory theater, then moved to television, where he scored a success in the BBC's re-staging of the American teledrama Requiem for a Heavyweight. The actor moved on to films, playing bit parts (he'd been an extra in the 1954 Anna Neagle musical Lilacs in the Spring) and working up to supporting roles. Connery's first important movie role was as Lana Turner's romantic interest in Another Time, Another Place (1958) -- although he was killed off 15 minutes into the picture. After several more years in increasingly larger film and TV roles, Connery was cast as James Bond in 1962's Dr. No; he was far from the first choice, but the producers were impressed by Connery's refusal to kowtow to them when he came in to read for the part. The actor played the secret agent again in From Russia With Love (1963), but it wasn't until the third Bond picture, Goldfinger (1964), that both Connery and his secret-agent alter ego became a major box-office attraction. While the money steadily improved, Connery was already weary of Bond at the time of the fourth 007 flick Thunderball (1965). He tried to prove to audiences and critics that there was more to his talents than James Bond by playing a villain in Woman of Straw (1964), an enigmatic Hitchcock hero in Marnie (1964), a cockney POW in The Hill (1965), and a loony Greenwich Village poet in A Fine Madness (1966). Despite the excellence of his characterizations, audiences preferred the Bond films, while critics always qualified their comments with references to the secret agent. With You Only Live Twice (1967), Connery swore he was through with James Bond; with Diamonds Are Forever (1971), he really meant what he said. Rather than coast on his celebrity, the actor sought out the most challenging movie assignments possible, including La Tenda Rossa/The Red Tent (1969), The Molly Maguires (1970), and Zardoz (1973). This time audiences were more responsive, though Connery was still most successful with action films like The Wind and the Lion (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), and The Great Train Robbery (1979). With his patented glamorous worldliness, Connery was also ideal in films about international political intrigue like The Next Man (1976), Cuba (1979), The Hunt for Red October (1990), and The Russia House (1990). One of Connery's personal favorite performances was also one of his least typical: In The Offence (1973), he played a troubled police detective whose emotions -- and hidden demons -- are agitated by his pursuit of a child molester. In 1981, Connery briefly returned to the Bond fold with Never Say Never Again, but his difficulties with the production staff turned what should have been a fond throwback to his salad days into a nightmarish experience for the actor. At this point, he hardly needed Bond to sustain his career; Connery had not only the affection of his fans but the respect of his industry peers, who honored him with the British Film Academy award for The Name of the Rose (1986) and an American Oscar for The Untouchables (1987) (which also helped make a star of Kevin Costner, who repaid the favor by casting Connery as Richard the Lionhearted in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves [1991] -- the most highly publicized "surprise" cameo of that year). While Connery's star had risen to new heights, he also continued his habit of alternating crowd-pleasing action films with smaller, more contemplative projects that allowed him to stretch his legs as an actor, such as Time Bandits (1981), Five Days One Summer (1982), A Good Man in Africa (1994), and Playing by Heart (1998). Although his mercurial temperament and occasionally overbearing nature is well known, Connery is nonetheless widely sought out by actors and directors who crave the thrill of working with him, among them Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas, who collaborated with Connery on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), where the actor played Jones' father. Connery served as executive producer on his 1992 vehicle Medicine Man (1992), and continued to take on greater behind-the-camera responsibilities on his films, serving as both star and executive producer on Rising Sun (1993), Just Cause (1995), and The Rock (1996). He graduated to full producer on Entrapment (1999), and, like a true Scot, he brought the project in under budget; the film was a massive commercial success and paired Connery in a credible onscreen romance with Catherine Zeta-Jones, a beauty 40 years his junior. He also received a unusual hipster accolade in Trainspotting (1996), in which one of the film's Gen-X dropouts (from Scotland, significantly enough) frequently discusses the relative merits of Connery's body of work. Appearing as Allan Quartermain in 2003's comic-to-screen adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the seventy-three year old screen legend proved that he still had stamina to spare and that despite his age he could still appear entirely believeable as a comic-book superhero. Still a megastar in the 1990s, Sean Connery commanded one of moviedom's highest salaries -- not so much for his own ego-massaging as for the good of his native Scotland, to which he continued to donate a sizable chunk of his earnings.

Trivia: Many will remember voluptuous Italian leading actress Daniela Bianchi for portraying the luscious Tatiana Romanava opposite Sean Connery's James Bond in From Russia With Love (1963). Bianchi subsequently appeared in several Italian and international films through the early '70s.

Trivia: Raised in Scotland and then Cornwall, Robert Shaw was drawn to acting and writing from his youth. Shaw trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1949 he debuted onstage at the Shakespeare Memorial Theater at Stratford-on-Avon. From 1951 he appeared in British and (later) American films as a character actor, frequently playing heavies. He became better known internationally after appearing in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love (1963), and he received a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons. (1966). In the mid '70s he suddenly became a highly paid star after his appearances in several blockbuster movies, including The Sting (1973), Jaws (1975), and The Deep (1977). He wrote a play and several novels, including The Man in the Glass Booth (1967), which he adapted into a play; it was successful in both London and New York, and in 1975 was made into a film. His novel The Hiding Place (1959) was the source material for the screen comedy Situation Hopeless -- But Not Serious (1965). He died of a heart attack at age 51. His second wife (of three) was actress Mary Ure.

Trivia: Best known as a stage performer and recording artist, and the wife of composer Kurt Weill -- whose songs made up the repertory for which she was most widely recognized as an interpreter -- Lotte Lenya also made a handful of notable film appearances across her six-decade career. Born Karoline Blamauer in Hitzing, Austria, to a working-class Catholic family, her childhood associations with music were somewhat harrowing, centered on her physically abusive father who, in his drunken rages, would pull her out of bed to have her sing to him and then berate her; she was forced to go to work at an early age and did her best, mostly out of love for her mother Johanna. It was her mother and her aunt, Sophie, who conspired to get the girl out of the household and away to Zurich, where she went to work as a maid to a couple who, by chance, were photographers. It was a chance look at a photo of ballet dancer Steffi Herzeg that stimulated her interest in dance, and she became a pupil of Herzeg's. She was good enough at age 13 to get engaged as an apprentice ballerina in Zurich, which enabled her -- though officially an Austrian national -- to remain in Switzerland at the outbreak of World War I. The next year allowed her to experience all of the exposure to art and music that she had missed growing up under her father's abusive regimen, and she began to get known as a dancer, and a protégée of Richard Revy, the chief director of the Schauspielhaus. By 1916, after a period as an apprentice, she became a full-fledged member of the ballet company at the Stadttheater in Zurich; and by 1918 she was giving solo performances, and also taking on acting roles, in plays by Ludwig Anzengruber and George Bernard Shaw. Her ballet work extended to appearances in operetta productions, such as Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow, and she'd even made an appearance as an extra in one opera production. Among those she crossed paths with professionally was Elisabeth Bergner, the future film star and then an apprentice actress, with whom she worked in supporting roles in Franz Wedekind's Kammersanger. Her work had forced her to choose a stage name -- eventually she came around to "Lotte," an informal shortening of her middle name, and "Lenja," a variation on "Jalena" from Uncle Vanya, a play that had special personal resonance to her and to Revy; "Lenja" eventually became "Lenya" after she moved to the United States. By 1921, she'd made the leap from Zurich to Berlin, which was the center of a multitude of new, modernistic, forward-looking artistic visionaries. Alas, the only audition she could get at first -- despite Revy's best efforts -- was in a Russian touring ballet company doing a children's pantomime, with music by a composer named Kurt Weill. The two met during the audition, but she never did return for the rehearsal, and -- on Revy's advice, after he failed to get the job as director -- walked away from the production without a word. Instead, she made her Berlin debut in an acting role, as Maria in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. As her career moved forward, and toward acting much more than dance, Lenya crossed paths again with Weill in 1924, and this time the sparks flew and the little, bespectacled composer fell in love with the actress. By the spring of 1925, they were living together and in the first month of the following year they were married. She was part of his life when he saw his first major success, with the opera Der Protagonist in 1926, but by 1928, Weill, his playwright collaborator Bertolt Brecht, and Lenya would constitute a creative/performing triumvirate that would be immortalized for decades to come, with Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera), a modernization and "musicalization" of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. Lenya was immortalized in the role of Jenny, which became her breakthrough -- from the premiere of the work, on the final day in August of 1928, until the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in 1933, she was the star of the moment. This was also the work that afforded Lenya her first screen role -- G.W. Pabst's film version of The Threepenny Opera outraged Brecht, because of changes to the libretto, but it proved an extraordinary vehicle for Lenya, who appeared in both the French and German versions of the movie (a planned English version was never shot). Unfortunately, the worsening political situation in Germany was to cut short any benefit that Lenya, Weill, Brecht, or anyone else might have seen from the movie -- their Seven Deadly Sins (1933) saw its premiere in Paris, not Berlin, as she and Weill became cultural and political refugees from the Nazi-run government. Not all was happy or easy during this period between them personally, and they were divorced that same year. But barely two years later, after both emigrated to the United States, they reconciled, and in 1937 were remarried, this time for keeps -- they were together until Weill's death 15 years later, eventually settling in New City, New York. Lenya did contribute some recordings to the American war effort, and to the Voice of America, but she was primarily a creature of the stage for the next decade, and not even that for a time, following an unhappy experience in Weill's The Firebrand of Florence (1945), which convinced her to give up the theater temporarily. She re-emerged in the years following Weill's death, and in 1956 won a Tony Award for her performance as Jenny in Marc Blitzstein's English-language adaptation of The Threepenny Opera. This, in turn, led to a revived recording career and to cabaret work; Lenya, in turn, became the keeper of her late husband's work, and eventually founded a music society to help foster performances and recordings. In 1961, she returned to feature film work for the first time in 30 years with a role in the movie The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, starring Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty and based on a work by Tennessee Williams. Then, in 1963, came Lenya's breakthrough to mass exposure, when she accepted the co-starring role of Rosa Klebb, the murderous lesbian spy master in Terence Young's From Russia With Love. It was a role that people would refer to for the rest of her life, and one of those career oddities that would amuse her from time to time. Lenya's three subsequent movie appearances would range from supporting roles in Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (1966) and North Dallas Forty (1976) to a starring role in Sidney Lumet's The Appointment (1969). In the midst of this sudden revival of her movie career, Lenya returned to the Broadway stage in a very prominent manner, originating the role of Fraulein Schneider in the musical Cabaret. Lenya cut a striking figure during her final years, both onscreen and on talk shows, which she did occasionally. She was arguably, along with Marlene Dietrich, the most enduringly popular performing star to come out of pre-war/pre-Nazi Germany. She died of cancer in 1981 in New York City.

Trivia: Born Wladyslaw Sheybal. Polish character actor in English-language films, onscreen from the '50s.

Trivia: British character actor Walter Gotell spent most of his screen time as the "enemy." He was especially adept at portraying hissable Nazis in WWII dramas and equally odious KGB agents in Cold War films. His best-known role was Russian General Gogol in three of the James Bond epics: Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, and View to a Kill. Walter Gotell remained active in films and TV throughout the 1990s, as sinister as ever in such works as Puppet Master IV (1991).

Trivia: One of Great Britain's foremost pin-up girls, the delightful Martine Beswicke has managed the neat trick of being kinky and classy all in one. Billed as "Martin Beswick," Beswicke made her first film appearance as one of the fighting gypsy girls in the 1963 James Bond flick From Russia With Love; she returned to Bondland with a more substantial role in Thunderball (1965). After drawing attention away from a near-naked Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. (1966), Beswicke was awarded with the leading role in the similar Prehistoric Women (1967). She attracted the notice of the intelligentsia with her performance as a leather-clad lesbian in 1967's Penthouse, then went on to play half the title role in Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971). By contrast, her portrayal of Xaviera Hollander in The Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood was a model of restraint. American TV viewers were given ample opportunity to drink in the charms of Martine Beswicke in the 1979 miniseries The Innocent and the Damned -- not to mention her brief but impressive (and fully clothed) appearance in a well-circulated beer commercial of the early '80s.

Trivia: Born into a theatrical family, British actor Bernard Lee first trod the boards at age six. Supporting himself as a fruit salesman, Lee attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, making his West End stage bow in 1928. In films from 1934, Lee showed up in dozens of bits and minor roles, his screen time increasing throughout the 1950s. He showed up prominently as the resident police inspector in several of the "Edgar Wallace" "B"-picture series of the early 1960s. In 1962, Lee was cast as M, the immediate superior to Secret Agent 007 James Bond, in Dr. No. Bernard Lee continued to portray M in all subsequent Bond endeavors, up to and including 1979's Moonraker; he also essayed the role in the 1967 Bond spin-off, Operation Kid Brother, which starred Sean Connery's younger brother Neil.

Trivia: Her real name just wouldn't do for a marquee in the Bible Belt, so Canadian-born actress Lois Hooker became Lois Maxwell when she arrived in Hollywood. Maxwell appeared in one British picture and a handful of American programmers before she sought out better opportunities in the Italian film industry. She returned to Britain as a second lead and character actress in 1956. In 1970, Maxwell co-starred in the Canadian TV series Adventures in Rainbow County. Lois Maxwell is best remembered for her appearances as the coolly efficient, subtly predatory Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond films produced between 1962 and 1985 -- at least until she was unceremoniously dumped in favor of a younger actress for the two Timothy Dalton Bond epics of the late 1980s. Maxwell died at age 80 in September 2007.

Trivia: British character actor Francis de Wolff first appeared onscreen in the '30s.

Trivia: British actor George Pastell began appearing in films as early as 1952. He was busiest at the Hammer Studios in the late '50s to early '60s, playing supporting roles in such melodramas as The Mummy (1959) (as the High Priest), Stranglers of Bombay (1961), and The Siege of Sidney Street (1962). His TV credits included the long-running cult favorites Dr. Who and The Avengers. As far as can be determined, George Pastell retired in 1969.

Trivia: Breaking into show business at 16 as the assistant to a "drunken magician" British character actor Peter Madden held down jobs ranging from race-car driver to stand-up comedian before settling into acting. He was frequently cast as slightly tattered politicians, as witness Nothing but the Best (1964) and Dr. Zhivago (1965). His deadpan portrayal of a Tibetan lama was one of the highlights of the otherwise patchy Hope-Crosby vehicle Road to Hong Kong (1962). Espionage fans will remember Peter Madden as Hobbs, John Drake's (Patrick McGoohan) immediate superior, on the mid-1960s TVer Secret Agent.

Trivia: "Bond -- James Bond," would have been nothing without Llewelyn -- Desmond Llewelyn. Llewelyn played the tweedy technophile who invented the bizarre gadgetry 007 used to thwart the sinister machinations of Dr. No, Goldfinger, and other dastardly villains in 17 Bond movies. Llewelyn's character was named Geoffrey Boothroyd, but no one in the Bond movies called him that. Instead, they called him "Q," short for "quartermaster." Like an army quartermaster who equips troops, Q equipped Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and other Bonds with the supplies of the espionage trade. Desmond Wilkinson Llewelyn was born in South Wales on September 12, 1914, the son of a Welsh coal-mining engineer. Interested in acting at an early age, he first studied accounting and law enforcement before enrolling in the Royal Academy of Arts at age 20. After joining the Royal Welsh Fusiliers at the onset of World War II, he fought in France as a second lieutenant and fell into enemy hands after a two-day battle with a German panzer division. He spent the next five years in German POW camps at Rottenburg, Laufen, and Warburg. He once tried to tunnel his way to freedom, but failed. Llewelyn returned to acting and began his film career in 1950 with a part in They Were Not Divided, then went on to appear in 31 other films, including the Bond films. Among the non-Bond films he appeared in, sometimes in quite minor roles, were Cleopatra (1963), Silent Playground (1964), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Merlin (1992), and Taboo (1997). Between 1963 and the year of his death, 1999, he played in all but two of the Bond films -- more than any of the actors who starred as James Bond, including Connery, Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan. As Q, Llewelyn was always irascible and cranky in response to 007's carefree nonchalance. Like a professor with a flippant student, he scolded Bond to pay attention and tutored his charge in the use of "Q toys," as his booby-trapped marvels came to be known. Still, Q was a master of mischief, a gray-haired boy who concocted an endless variety of spy paraphernalia and bizarre weapons, like the Rolex watch that could alter the path of a speeding bullet; the pen grenade that, with three clicks of a button, could be set to detonate in four seconds; the key ring that could open almost any lock in the world, release nerve gas, or simply explode; and the Lotus sports car that doubled as a submarine, complete with torpedoes and surface-to-air missiles.In real life, Llewelyn was all thumbs when it came to technology, and he was kind and gentle to all he encountered. On the movie set, his co-workers and other fans crowded around to observe when it came time for him to introduce his new marvel to the Bond de jour, and he spent as long as it took to sign autographs for anyone who wanted one. Ironically, it was an automobile, a blue Renault Megane, that killed Llewelyn. He died in a hospital shortly after the Renault collided with another car near Firle in East Sussex, England, on December 19, 1999. The crash site was not far from his home, Bexhill-on-Sea, south of London. He was survived by his wife Pamela, whom he married in 1938, and two sons. His son Ivor told Britain's Sky Television, "He was a kind, very lovable man, and as a father he was great."

Trivia: British filmmaker Terence Young, who was born in Shanghai, began working in the movie business as a screenwriter specializing in comedy at the age of 21 (in 1936). Shortly thereafter, he served in the military during World War II. He co-directed one documentary, Men of Arnhem (1944), during the war, and reportedly was one of Laurence Olivier's early choices to direct Henry V. But it wasn't until 1948 that he got to make his first movie, Corridor of Mirrors. He quickly became an expert at making thrillers, although he occasionally worked in other areas, including the award-winning dance film Black Tights (1960). In 1962, he suddenly emerged as a major filmmaker when he was chosen to direct Dr. No, the first James Bond movie. Its success, and that of the follow-up film From Russia With Love (1963), established the series and the hero (as well as Sean Connery), but Young pulled out of Goldfinger (1964) during pre-production when the producers refused to cut him in for a percentage of the profits. He was back for Thunderball (1965), which was the biggest-grossing Bond movie up to that time. His work on The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965) was lively, but the film failed to find the same audience as Tony Richardson's Tom Jones, on which it had been modeled. However, his chilling adaptation of the stage thriller Wait Until Dark (1967) was a hit. Young's career from this point on went into gradual decline, as he became involved in difficult international productions, big-budget flops (Mayerling), or politically disreputable films such as Inchon (1982) (financed by the Unification Church). He made his last movie, the thriller The Jigsaw Man, in 1984.

Trivia: The early years of producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli are a bit clouded: some biographers state that his education ended in high school, while others insist that he attended C.C.N.Y. One thing is certain: Broccoli was employed as an agronomist before accepting a job as an assistant director at 20th Century Fox in 1938. In the late '40s, he was hired in the same capacity by RKO, and in 1949 briefly worked as an actor's agent with the Charles K. Feldman agency. Moving to England in 1951, Broccoli formed Warwick Pictures with his partner, Irving Allen. The company turned out such Anglo-American productions as Paratrooper (1953) and The Black Knight (1954), both starring Alan Ladd; the location-filmed Safari (1956), with Victor Mature and Janet Leigh; and The Gamma People (1956), a diverting sci-fier. One of Warwick's few unrealized projects was a TV version of Sherlock Holmes; after years of negotiating with Broccoli and Allen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's son, Adrian, decided to cast his lot with maverick producer Sheldon Reynolds. In 1960, Broccoli bolted Warwick to form Eon Productions with Harry Saltzman. The crowning achievement of this collaboration was the fantastically successful James Bond film series, beginning with 1962's Dr. No. In 1976, Broccoli and Saltzman split up, with Broccoli assuming all movie rights to the James Bond property (he has since passed these rights along to his daughter, likewise a producer). During his long film career, Albert R. Broccoli has received numerous film and "civilian" honors, including the Irving G. Thalberg Award, the Order of the British Empire, and France's Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.

Trivia: Manhattan-born Richard Maibaum attended NYU, then headed west to study acting at the University of Iowa. Before he was 30, Maibaum was a firmly established Broadway actor and playwright. He entered films as a screenwriter in 1937, spending the war years with the army's Combat Film Division. In 1946, he joined Paramount as both screenwriter and producer, turning out such worthwhile projects as The Big Clock (1948) and the 1949 version of The Great Gatsby. Advised that making films abroad was an excellent tax shelter, Maibaum formed a partnership in the 1950s with producers Irving Allen and Albert Broccoli. This alliance eventually led to the James Bond series of the 1960s and 1970s: Richard Maibaum wrote or cowrote the screenplay for virtually every Bond film, beginning with Dr. No (1962) and ending with License to Kill (1989).

Trivia: British sound editor Harry Miller made an important contribution to film in 1929 by becoming the first dubbing editor. He accomplished this while working on Hitchcock's early talkies, most notably Blackmail, in which he had actress Joan Barry speak the dialogue outside the camera's range while the film's leading lady, Anna Ondra, whose Czech-accented English was unintelligible, mouthed the words. The actual title "dubbing editor" was ascribed to Miller in 1939 on the credits for Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Miller did sound work on films through the mid-'60s.

Trivia: Born in Canada, Harry Saltzman was raised in the United States, where he began his film production career in the 1940s. After several years in American and British television, Saltzman joined the Big Leagues in 1959, when, without a dime to his name, he offered to finance Woodfall Films, a British production company formed by playwright John Osborne and director Tony Richardson. Fortunately for everyone concerned, Saltzman never had to endure the humiliation of having the banks call in their loans: Woodfall's first two features, the "angry young man" dramas Look Back in Anger (1959) and The Entertainer (1960), were huge moneymakers. In later years, Woodfall partner Tony Richardson summed up Saltzman thusly: "He had the perfect mogul's figure--stocky, tubby, crinkly grey hair and the face of an eager coarse cherub." Moving on to form Eon Productions with producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli in 1962, Saltzman bankrolled an inexpensive espionage thriller titled Dr. No. Thus was launched the James Bond series, one of the most financially successful group of films in motion picture history. Flying solo in 1965, Saltzman launched a second spy series with his cinemadaptation of Len Deighton's The Ipcress File. Harry Saltzman dissolved his partnership with Broccoli after the 1974 James Bond opus The Man With the Golden Gun; he produced one more film on his own, Nijinsky (1980), then retired after suffering a stroke at the age of 65.

Trivia: Not to be confused with the famed espionage novelist of the same name, Australian-born actor Ian Fleming was one of the best and longest-established character players in British films. On stage since the age of sixteen, Fleming made his first film, Second to None in 1926--and his last, Return of Mr. Moto, in 1965. The actor's cinematic stock in trade was a fussy dignity who disguised hidden strength. In this, Ian Fleming was an ideal Dr. Watson opposite Arthur Wontner in a series of British Sherlock Holmes films produced in the mid '30s.