Roger Moore, who died in 2017, portrayed the British spy James Bond aka 007 in seven films. No one else slipped into the role as often as Moore.
Telephone number 007 – pure coincidence?
Roger Moore was probably not the secret agent with the license to kill, as his son Geoffrey Moore also admitted. He spoke about his famous father in an interview with “BBC”. In the conversation, the 58-year-old talks about the iconic role and how his father reinvented it for himself.
Geoffrey Moore still remembers how his father found out that he had got the role of James Bond. Roger Moore received a call at that time and answered “007” (at that time the last three digits of Moore’s number were 007 and it was common practice to answer with those digits). “That’s you, Roger,” was the reply on the other side of the line. From 1973 to 1985, Roger Moore personified the British agent.
“He just killed her with charm.”
But Moore’s son told the BBC that Sean Connery, with his lurid “I’ll sleep with you and kill your boss tomorrow” attitude, most closely matched author Ian Fleming’s ideas for 007. The James Bond blueprint was an outrageous heartthrob in the guise of a cool, almost macho agent.
But his father, according to Geoffrey Moore, had other ideas for the role and took a sardonic approach to realizing the character. “Roger didn’t actually want to fire a gun,” says his son, “he just killed them with charm.” Instead of making Roger Moore become James Bond, his tactic was more to make James Bond become Roger Moore. “I think he had more of a ‘license to inspire,’” said Moore’s son. Geoffrey Moore is aware that his father’s reverse tactic must have required great talent.
Geoffrey Moore still fondly remembers his childhood on set; it was fantastic. But having James Bond as a father also had its downsides. For example, he tells how his father once picked him up from school and the car was immediately surrounded by students who wanted to get a glimpse of the 007 actor. “I thought, ‘Oh, okay, he’s well known. I’m not the only one who sees him in the box,'” said the actor.
According to Geoffrey, his father’s favorite Bond film was 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, starring Barbara Bach as the Bond girl Anya Amasova and Curd Jürgens as the villain.