page_title: Sean Connery
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Sean Connery / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Scotland has a long tradition of 'rags to riches' stories, but few can be as extraordinary as that of the working-class milkman in post-war austerity Britain who became an accomplished actor and the world's most glamorous male filmstar in the 'Swinging Sixties'. The plaque is on a block of modern flats in Fountainbridge, close to the site of the demolished tenement where Connery grew up and where his father worked at the nearby North British Rubber Company's Castle Mill. "When I took a taxi during a recent Edinburgh Film Festival, the cabbie was amazed that I could put a name to every street we passed. "How come?" he asked. "As a boy I used to deliver milk round here," I said. "So what do you do now?" That was rather harder to answer." -- Sean Connery, Being A Scot, 2008
context_page_description: Sir Thomas Sean Connery is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards, and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.
  Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films, between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie, Murder on the Orient Express, The Man Who Would Be King, The Name of the Rose, Highlander, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, Dragonheart, The Rock, and Finding Forrester.
  Connery has been polled in The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the US with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
context_section_description: Thomas Sean Connery, named Thomas after his grandfather, was born in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, Scotland on 25 August 1930. His mother, Euphemia "Effie" McBain McLean, was a cleaning woman. She was born the daughter of Neil McLean and Helen Forbes Ross, and named after her father's mother Euphemia McBain, wife of John McLean and daughter of William McBain from Ceres in Fife. Connery's father, Joseph Connery, was a factory worker and lorry driver. His paternal grandfather's parents emigrated to Scotland from Ireland in the mid-19th century. The remainder of his family was of Scottish descent, and his maternal great-grandparents were native Scottish Gaelic speakers from Fife (unusually, for a speaker of the language), and Uig on Skye.
  His father was a Roman Catholic, and his mother was a Protestant. He has a younger brother, Neil. Connery has said that he was called Sean, his middle name, long before becoming an actor, explaining that when he was young he had an Irish friend named Séamus and that those who knew them both had decided to call Connery by his middle name whenever both were present. He was generally referred to in his youth as "Tommy". Although he was small in primary school, he grew rapidly around the age of 12, reaching his full adult height of 6 ft 2 in (188 cm) at 18. He was known during his teen years as "Big Tam", and has stated that he lost his virginity to an adult woman in an ATS uniform at the age of 14.
  Connery's first job was as a milkman in Edinburgh with St. Cuthbert's Co-operative Society. In 2009, Connery recalled a conversation in a taxi:
  When I took a taxi during a recent Edinburgh Film Festival, the driver was amazed that I could put a name to every street we passed. "How come?" he asked. "As a boy I used to deliver milk round here," I said. "So what do you do now?" That was rather harder to answer.
  In 1946, at the age of 16, Connery joined the Royal Navy, during which time he acquired two tattoos, of which his official website says "unlike many tattoos, his were not frivolous—his tattoos reflect two of his lifelong commitments: his family and Scotland. ... One tattoo is a tribute to his parents and reads 'Mum and Dad,' and the other is self-explanatory, 'Scotland Forever.'" He trained in Portsmouth at the naval gunnery school and in an anti-aircraft crew. He was later assigned as an Able Seaman on HMS Formidable. Connery was later discharged from the navy age 19 on medical grounds because of a duodenal ulcer, a condition that affected most of the males in previous generations of his family. 
  Afterwards, he returned to the co-op, then worked as, among other things, a lorry driver, a lifeguard at Portobello swimming baths, a labourer, an artist's model for the Edinburgh College of Art, and after a suggestion by former Mr. Scotland, Archie Brennan, a coffin polisher. The modelling earned him 15 shillings an hour. Artist Richard Demarco, at the time a student who painted several early pictures of Connery, described him as "very straight, slightly shy, too, too beautiful for words, a virtual Adonis".
  Connery began bodybuilding at the age of 18, and from 1951 trained heavily with Ellington, a former gym instructor in the British Army. While his official website claims he was third in the 1950 Mr. Universe contest, most sources place him in the 1953 competition, either third in the Junior class or failing to place in the Tall Man classification. Connery stated that he was soon deterred from bodybuilding when he found that the Americans frequently beat him in competitions because of sheer muscle size and, unlike Connery, refused to participate in athletic activity which could make them lose muscle mass.
  Connery was a keen footballer, having played for Bonnyrigg Rose in his younger days. He was offered a trial with East Fife. While on tour with South Pacific, Connery played in a football match against a local team that Matt Busby, manager of Manchester United, happened to be scouting. According to reports, Busby was impressed with his physical prowess and offered Connery a contract worth £25 a week (
caption: Sean Connery plaque near the site of his birth in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh
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