Ageing With Attitude: Secrets to live a long and healthy life

Sean Connery hits 85 this week. The original Bond star is part of a generation that can look forward to reaching their 90s if they take care of their bodies, says Margaret Jennings.        

He exploded on to the big screen in 1962, bringing high speed fantasy and fun to an audience that rarely travelled by plane beyond Ireland — not to mention the far-flung exotic locations where 007 strutted his stuff.

That was 53 years ago, and Sean Connery, the dark handsome Scotsman who was 32 when he first took on the role, stole millions of hearts over the course of the seven Bond films he starred in, with his macho portrayal of the suave spy.

He was 54 when he relinquished the role in 1983 but 15 years later he was voted Sexiest Man of the Century, aged 69, proving that age need have nothing to do with the qualities we project on to male screen idols.

Connery will be 85 on Tuesday week (August 25) and back in his 30s when he was at his peak and sporting an already receding hairline, he was quoted as saying: “More than anything else, I’d like to be an old man with a good face, like Hitchcock or Picasso.”

Not for him, he stressed, “letting 18 hairs grow a foot and half long, so they can be wound around your head. Just let your head be and you don’t have a problem.”

Judging by recent pictures of the retired actor, it seems he has just done that. His wife Micheline Roquebrune, who lives with him in the Bahamas, has said that her husband is what he is.

“He’s not trying to hide anything. That genuineness by itself is sexy in a man.” She herself is turning 87 later this year and obviously hasn’t changed her mind, as they have been married for 40 years, a record in Hollywood terms.

Connery and his wife — though they enjoy a privileged laid-back life in the sunny tax haven — are examples of how people can expect to live well into their 80s in this day and age.

According to the National Institute on Aging the ‘oldest old’ — that is people aged 85 or older — constitute 8% of the world’s population aged 65 plus, with that figure being 12% in more developed countries and 6% in less developed countries.

When Connery started out as 007 in the 1960s, the average expected lifespan of the cinema audience was 64.5 for a man, and 67.1 for a woman. Today it is 76.8 and 81.6, respectively.

Research has shown that it is environmental and lifestyle factors — rather than genetic — that have played the biggest part in our extended lives, with the population aged over 65 expected to double over the next three decades.

Of the seven 007 stars, six are still alive and thriving — David Niven passed away in 1983, aged 73.

George Lazenby (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969) is 75; Roger Moore (Bond from 1973- 1985), is 87; Timothy Dalton (Bond 1987-1994) is 71, and Pierce Brosnan (Bond 1994-2005) is 61.

British actor Daniel Craig, the current Bond – and critically acclaimed as the best interpreter of the role since Connery – has lots of mileage left, at just 47.

However Craig, who will feature in the 24th Bond film Spectre, released in cinemas in Ireland on October 23, will go down in history as starring opposite actress Monica Belucci, the first Bond leading lady (or ‘Bond ‘girl’, now a much-outdated term), to play the part, at the ‘ancient’ age of 50.

The average age of actresses wrestling or romping with Bond in the past, was 30. Belluci who will be 51 next month is very beautiful, but the Italian actress also represents a social shift in acknowledging that there is a lot of life left after the fifth decade and beyond.

Most of the Bond women who starred in the earlier films are now in their late 60s and 70s. Honor Blackman – famous as ‘Pussy Galore’ in the 1964 film Goldfinger - will be 90, three days before Connery’s birthday this month.

The London-based British actress is an example of the new ‘old old’ – living alone and still embracing life to the full.

She has said in interviews that eating well, staying hydrated and doing regular pilates are top of her lifestyle choices, as well spending time with her two children and four grandchildren, and staying informed about world current affairs.

Last year she explained that she had refused a CBE in 2002 — unlike Connery— because she was a Republican, proving that she has remained sharp-minded, feisty and opinionated despite all the changes in her life since those early Bond days.