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Connery is the highest paid screen star Britain has ever produced. Born in Edinburgh in 1930 to a truck driver and a cleaner, he left school at 15 and, after a stint in the navy, worked as a lifeguard, coffin polisher and milkman, while also representing Scotland in Mr Universe. After winning a part in the chorus of South Pacific, acting replaced his early footballing ambitions. TV work and bit parts followed. Fame hit after he pulled on a toupé and beat off Cary Grant and David Niven to play James Bond. Since then, classics have come thick and fast, including The Man Who Would Be King, Murder On The Orient Express, the underrated Outland and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, to name but a few. Still a leading man and box office hit, he won an Oscar for The Untouchables in 1987. He was knighted in 1999 and is at the forefront of plans to open a film studio in Scotland.
