{"id":4955,"date":"2011-12-02T23:16:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T23:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/12\/im-no-bond-despite-his-ice-cool-image-007-star-sir-roger-moore-says-he%c2%bfs-just-a-big-softie\/"},"modified":"2011-12-02T23:16:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-02T23:16:00","slug":"im-no-bond-despite-his-ice-cool-image-007-star-sir-roger-moore-says-hes-just-a-big-softie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/12\/02\/im-no-bond-despite-his-ice-cool-image-007-star-sir-roger-moore-says-hes-just-a-big-softie\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m no Bond! Despite his ice-cool image, 007 star Sir Roger Moore says he\u00bfs just a big softie"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\nBy
\nRebecca Hardy<\/a><\/p>\n

Last updated at 11:16 PM on 2nd December 2011<\/p>\n

Sir Roger Moore has just become a grandfather for the fifth time. He\u2019s cock-a-hoop, but weary. Maximilian, his second grandson, was born at 5.30 this morning, keeping him \u2018on tenterhooks\u2019 for most of the night. \u2018Zara, Max\u2019s mother, had been having contractions, but I\u2019d had to come to Geneva for a Unicef auction at Christie\u2019s,\u2019 he says.
<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018There\u2019s no way I couldn\u2019t come. Christian [Roger\u2019s son] said, \u201cWhat\u2019s more important Dad, your new grandson or flying off to a dinner?\u201d I said, \u201cThe birth may not happen today, but the auction is now and I have to go.\u201d In a way he was testing me. He likes to provoke, but I was on tenterhooks.\u2019 Roger says this with a warm, deepthroated laugh that sounds like the gentle revving of James Bond\u2019s trademark Aston Martin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, he\u2019s 84 and knighted for his work as a Goodwill Ambassador to Unicef, which he says is just as well, as he\u2019d have had to wait \u2018500 years\u2019 to be honoured for his acting. Roger is passionate about Unicef \u2013 so much so that his fourth wife Kristina worries he\u2019s working himself into an early grave for the children\u2019s charity. Eight years ago he had a pacemaker fitted after collapsing on stage in New York, and a decade earlier he discovered he had prostate cancer. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\"Roger<\/p>\n

Roger as James Bond, with Maud Adams and Britt Ekland in The Man With The Golden Gun in 1974<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Roger rarely gives interviews and, when he does, he bats away questions about his private life with his legendary wit. The cancer, for example, is normally dismissed as \u2018a pain in the a***\u2019. Today, though, he\u2019s more forthcoming. \u2018The prostate thing turned around my life,\u2019 he admits. \u2018I thought, \u201cI\u2019m going to do what I want now, not what others want all the time.\u201d\u2019 What did he want? \u2018Kristina.\u2019 His voice trembles with emotion when he says his wife\u2019s name. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\u2018When I met her she was a neighbour and, though I felt a strong attraction to her, I thought, \u201cThat won\u2019t go anywhere.\u201d But when I had the prostate problem I thought, \u201cThis is the direction my life has to go.\u201d\u2019 Roger was married at the time to his third wife Luisa, the mother of his three children Deborah, 48, Geoffrey, 44, and Christian, 38. When he told her he was leaving, the fall-out was of nuclear proportions, provoking a torrent of vitriol from Luisa who, after receiving a reported \u00a310 million divorce settlement, insisted she\u2019d been betrayed by her friend Kristina and discarded by her husband.
<\/span><\/p>\n

Roger has stayed silent on the matter, not wanting to engage in a \u2018war of words\u2019 with the mother of his children. \u2018I wasn\u2019t a particularly good husband but I\u2019m an OK father and an OK grandfather,\u2019 he says. \u2018It\u2019s a growing family. Kristina also has a daughter and a son and two grandsons. I have no aggravation at the moment. Growing up is when you become very happy with the person you\u2019re with.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\"Romance:<\/p>\n

Romance: Roger with his wife Kristina<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Roger and socialite Kristina married in a small secret ceremony in Copenhagen in 2002. \u2018We didn\u2019t tell anyone when we were getting married \u2013 no family, no one. Either you make a song and dance of it or you do it very quietly. We went to a little church and had three choristers. In Denmark you do a little wedding waltz after the ceremony, so we did that, then the priest made us two martinis and I had lots of oysters back at the hotel. It was a wonderful day.\u2019
<\/span><\/p>\n

Weren\u2019t his children disappointed? \u2018No, they were fine. Well, just one of them was a little peeved. But they all knew the deep affection Kristina and I had for one another. They thanked her for making me so content. Then I took Kristina to California to meet some very close friends like Frank Sinatra and Gregory Peck. There was a very touching moment when Greg met her for the first time. He put his arms around her and said, \u201cThank you for making my friend so happy.\u201d That was lovely. But if the children had been in their teens or younger I couldn\u2019t have done it.\u2019
<\/span><\/p>\n

Roger is a besotted father. When his oldest child Deborah was born he says he couldn\u2019t stop smiling. \u2018I remember when she was three weeks old, I was driving and stopped at a traffic light. A car pulled alongside me and I was sitting there with a huge grin on my face. I thought, \u201cGod, they must think I\u2019m slightly cuckoo.\u201d\u2019 We meet to talk about A Christmas Princess, a festive family movie in which Roger plays a Duke who befriends a brother and sister who have lost their parents. \u2018It\u2019s a feel good film,\u2019 he says. \u2018I don\u2019t have to jump around or shoot anybody, and there are no explosions.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s all a long way from Roger\u2019s humble beginnings as an only child born in south London to doting parents George, a policeman, and Lillian. He ended up acting by chance when he was spotted working as an extra in the film Caesar And Cleopatra in 1945. He went to RADA where he met his first wife, Doorn Van Steyn, whom he married in 1946. But the marriage was a disaster, largely due to a lack of money. It ended when he met the woman who was to become his second wife, the temperamental singer Dorothy Squires, who was 12 years his senior.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They travelled together to New York
\nwhere Roger\u2019s fortunes as an actor changed. \u2018In London I was one of a
\nwhole shoal of fish who looked a bit alike and spoke the same. In
\nAmerica I was a slightly different fish in the pond. I was spotted and
\nsigned by MGM. But I had no confidence at all. I was always nervous of
\nlooking a fool.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

In Denmark you do a little wedding waltz
\nafter the ceremony, so we did that, then the priest made us two
\nmartinis and I had lots of oysters back at the hotel…<\/span><\/div>\n

Dorothy was a gay icon in those days but Roger was, he says now, \u2018100 per cent heterosexual\u2019 and left her after meeting Luisa, then a beautiful 28-year-old Italian actress on the set of the low-budget French-Italian film The Rape Of The Sabine Women. He\u2019s said since that had he had children with Dorothy (she suffered a series of miscarriages) he might have made a different decision.<\/span> Indeed, he now deeply regrets the shabby way he treated his second wife. \u2018Life is full of regret,\u2019 he says. \u2018Have you got 15 hours? I don\u2019t have many regrets I\u2019d talk about, but yes, I regret that.\u2019
<\/span><\/p>\n

So much so, in fact, that when <\/span>Dorothy underwent surgery for bladder cancer in 1996, Roger picked up the bill. And at her funeral two years later a bouquet of purple tulips and lilies of the valley arrived with a card with the words, \u2018I\u2019ve said it with flowers.\u2019<\/span> Now he says, \u2018I don\u2019t believe there\u2019s a man with long white hair and a long white beard sitting on a big throne up in the clouds, but I do believe there\u2019s an intelligence. I think there\u2019s some form of reincarnation, where souls come back and might lead a tortured life because they never acquired enough knowledge before they left. I think the purpose of life is to acquire knowledge and use it. Not to use it is a sin.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m proudest now of being able to do something useful.\u2019 By which he means his work with Unicef. \u2018I worked with an actor many years ago who told me one morning he\u2019d slept badly. I said, \u201cWhy? Guilty conscience?\u201d He said, \u201cNo, it\u2019s not the things I did, it\u2019s the things I didn\u2019t do. I could have helped my mother more.\u201d They\u2019re the regrets one has \u2013 like not working with Unicef earlier in life. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The truth is, I was very different to Bond,\u2019 he says. \u2018I would find it very difficult to kill, or to be as flippant with women as Bond. But I had so many good years with him. Mostly, you had a job to do and you had to get on with it. Your priorities, when making films in places like Egypt, was not the poverty around you, but that you had to look immaculate. You couldn\u2019t be sweating, so you had to change your shirt every five minutes because of the heat.\u2019<\/span> And with that, he\u2019s off to his auction to raise another small fortune for charity. <\/span><\/p>\n

A Christmas Princess is available now on DVD, priced \u00a37.99. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Excerpt from:
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By Rebecca Hardy Last updated at 11:16 PM on 2nd December 2011 Sir Roger Moore has just become a grandfather for the fifth time. He\u2019s cock-a-hoop, but weary. Maximilian, his second grandson, was born at 5.30 this morning, keeping him \u2018on tenterhooks\u2019 for most of the night. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\nI'm no Bond! 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