Sir Roger Moore always made sure to laugh at himself before the audience could.<\/b>
\nLOS ANGELES (AP) – Sir Roger Moore always made sure to laugh at himself before the audience could. With a mere arch of an eyebrow, Moore, whose wit was dryer than James Bond’s martinis, could convey a skepticism of his accidental profession, disarming good looks and the suave characters he often played, from Bond to Simon Templar, all while saving the day and charming a scantily clad girl in the process. Sporting a posh accent and square jaw, Moore, who died Tuesday at age 89, looked the part of a movie star and a debonair international spy. But beneath the surface, the policeman’s son from South London, a sickly child and plump kid who always chose a joke over a street fight, saw the inherent ridiculousness of 007 – and left an indelible mark on the role, and a generation, because of it. \u00ab\u00a0You can’t be a real spy and have everybody in the world know who you are and what your drink is, \u00a0\u00bb Moore often said. \u00ab\u00a0That’s just hysterically funny.\u00a0\u00bb A large part of his charm is that Moore never set out to be an actor. As a teenager, on a lark, he tagged along with some friends doing crowd work on the Vivien Leigh and Claude Raines film \u00ab\u00a0Caesar and Cleopatra\u00a0\u00bb and caught the eye of someone who thought he should meet the director, \u00ab\u00a0He said I think you should be trained. I said, ‘Oh how wonderful, ‘\u00a0\u00bb Moore recalled in an interview. \u00ab\u00a0So I rushed home and told my mother I was going to be Stewart Granger.\u00a0\u00bb Stardom did not come immediately, however. Moore toiled as a working actor, in television and films in the UK, and then in the U. S. as a studio contract player for MGM before breaking through in a few television roles, in \u00ab\u00a0Maverick\u00a0\u00bb and then \u00ab\u00a0The Saint.\u00a0\u00bb The long-running show \u00ab\u00a0The Saint\u00a0\u00bb about the witty and charming romantic hero Simon Templar, many noted, was not unlike Moore himself – and would inform how he chose to play James Bond over the course of seven films, starting with \u00ab\u00a0Live and Let Die\u00a0\u00bb from 1973 and ending with \u00ab\u00a0A View to a Kill\u00a0\u00bb in 1985. For many, \u00ab\u00a0The Spy Who Loved Me, \u00a0\u00bb from 1977, is one of the greatest Bond films, and certainly the best for Moore – even though praise at the time was almost backhanded. \u00ab\u00a0Roger Moore is so enjoyably unflappable that you sometimes have to look closely to make sure he’s still breathing, \u00a0\u00bb wrote critic Janet Maslin in the New York Times. \u00ab\u00a0But his exaggerated composure amounts to a kind of backhanded liveliness. Though Mr. Moore doesn’t compromise the character, he makes it amusingly clear that hedonism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.\u00a0\u00bb Moore knew his own shortcomings, and would joke about them readily. He liked to say that the difference between The Saint and James Bond was in the eyebrow. \u00ab\u00a0In ‘The Saint’ I did raise my eyebrow, \u00a0\u00bb Moore would say. \u00ab\u00a0I don’t think I ever raised my eyebrow in Bond … except possibly when a bomb went off.\u00a0\u00bb He spent a lot of his time talking about those eyebrows that some critics tried to lance him for, drolly explaining that he had only three emotions – one eyebrow raised, the other, or both. \u00ab\u00a0A lot of the time, I laugh at myself as a defense mechanism, \u00a0\u00bb Moore said, always aware that his \u00ab\u00a0even features\u00a0\u00bb were both an asset to stardom and an impediment to being considered a serious actor. There might have been some truth there. Though well-known, Moore never rose to prestige roles. Even in his most well-known part, as Bond, he was doomed to always be compared to his predecessor Sean Connery. Moore accepted this fate with good humor, insisting throughout his life that Connery’s Bond, more macho and a killer, is the definitive and best interpretation. In fact, most of his accolades, including his knighthood, came from his work off-screen humanitarian with UNICEF, which he found through his friend Audrey Hepburn. \u00ab\u00a0He does not regard everything as a laugh, but he would die rather than let you see, \u00a0\u00bb said his friend Michael Caine. But he carried on the act, like a good soldier, throughout his life. Even recently, when asked what audiences can expect from his well-reviewed one-man stage show, Moore hesitated only to laugh. \u00ab\u00a0Two hours good sleep, \u00a0\u00bb he said. ___ Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com\/ldbahr Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/p>\n

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