Sean Connery’s furious admission on final film appearance: ‘Was a nightmare!’
SEAN CONNERY made an angry admission over his last film appearance which he claimed sped up his retirement, unearthed accounts show.
Sean Connery’s furious admission on final film appearance: ‘Was a nightmare!’ (Image: GETTY)
Sean Connery in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Image: GETTY)
Celebrated critic Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film one out of four stars, adding: “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen assembles a splendid team of heroes to battle a plan for world domination, and then, just when it seems about to become a real corker of an adventure movie, plunges into … inexplicable motivations, causes without effects, effects without causes, and general lunacy.”
Peter Travers, of Rolling Stone, concluded in a similar review: “Except for Connery, who is every inch the lion in winter, nothing here feels authentic.”
Even Connery himself admitted the film was poor, and reflected on it in a 2006 interview with The Times.
He said the film — alongside treatment for a kidney tumour — forced him into retirement from acting.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was released in 2003 (Image: GETTY)
Connery, who was knighted in 2000, described the film as a “nightmare”, and said: “The director (Stephen Norrington) should never have been given $185m (£152m).
“On the first day I realised he was insane.”
The star recalled how the film did “two months of night shooting in Prague in winter”, a time in the day when the “light goes at 2.30pm in the afternoon.
He even noted how he was tempted to walk off set altogether because “we were filming in the dark”.
Sean Connery as James Bond (Image: GETTY)
Connery continued: “I knew if I did [walked off set] it would never restart. The only one [Norrington] was scared of was me.
“He said, ‘Do you want to hit me?’ I said, ‘Don’t tempt me.’
“The experience had a great influence on me; it made me think about showbiz. And I have had other problems: people who raise money on me, then cut me out of it.”
This sped up the Scottish-born star’s motivation to quit acting, as he “got fed up dealing with idiots”.
Filming locations in UK (Image: EXPRESS)
He concluded: “There is a widening gap between those who know about movies and those who green-light movies.
“Then the s**t hits the fan. The one thing you can’t say in Hollywood is ‘I don’t know’.
“You appear in a film and then you realise the director has directed f*** all.”
In 2004, Connery was recognised as “The Greatest Living Scot” by the Sunday Herald.
Five years earlier, he was voted by PEOPLE magazine readers as the “Sexiest Man of the Century”.
He sadly passed away at his home in The Bahamas in 2020 aged 90.
