Roger Moore dead at 89

May 23, 2017 by Ian Evans

Roger Moore, who played the licensed-to-kill James Bond in seven movies, has died in Switzerland at the age of 89 after a battle with cancer.

Before Moore played Bond, starting with 1973’s Live and Let Die and ending with 1985’s A View to a Kill, he was already a star on TV, playing Simon Templar in The Saint from 1962 to 1969. Moore’s Bond was a little less gritty than some of the other portrayals, but he had the smooth charm of a spy comfortable in a Monte Carlo casino down pat. He saw absurdity in a character that all of his opponents seemed to know, saying “My whole reaction was always -– he is not a real spy. You can’t be a real spy and have everybody in the world know who you are and what your drink is. That’s just hysterically funny.” He once joked that he acted solely with his eyebrows and critic Anthony Lane of the New Yorker once quipped that Moore “needed a stunt double for his acting scenes.”

Regardless of all that, many of us thoroughly enjoyed his adventures as 007. Thank you, Mr. Moore. RIP.