him to superstardom and a Bond-like
existence with luxury homes in Switzer-
land, France and Monaco, hobnobbing
with royalty and famous friends. He
remained Hollywood hot property until
his death from cancer this May.B
orn in London on October 14,
1927, the only child of police-
man George Alfred Moore and
his wife Lillian “Lily” Pope,
Roger George Moore was a chubby, sick-
ly infant, frequently in hospital. At the
age of five he contracted double pneu-
monia and was so ill he couldn’t be
moved. Instead, a doctor came to the
home and declared young Roger
wouldn’t survive the night. A distraught
Lily was told to prepare for the worst.
But looking into her son’s blue eyes, she
was convinced her adored child wasn’t
ready to fade away.
Sure enough, by morning, little
Roger was heard faintly singing “Jesus
Wants Me For a Sunbeam”, a Sunday
school song. He beat the odds. “Illness
played a great – and unwelcome – role
in my early life,” Moore confirmed in his
autobiography, My Word is My Bond.
Otherwise, he had a happy, modest
childhood, playing conkers, rollerskat-
ing and holidaying by the seaside. On
Saturday mornings he’d spend his three-
pence pocket money on movie tickets.
“I never imagined, sitting in those cine-
mas, that I would one day be an actor up
on the silver screen,” he later reflected.
Moore excelled at school, but left
aged 15, in 1943, to work as a traineeanimator at a local movie house. In
1945, he landed a role as an extra in the
movie Caesar and Cleopatra, starring
Vivien Leigh. Director Desmond Hurst
spotted the strapping young man clad in
a toga on set, and suggested he apply to
study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic
Art. There he met fellow student Lois
Maxwell, who went on to play Miss
Moneypenny in the Bond films.
“Roger was the loveliest individual
anyone could hope to meet,” Maxwell
told marie claire shortly before she died
in 2007. “We adored him at school
because he was so handsome!”
Moore had found his calling.
Reflecting on his first stage audition,
he said, “I knew at that moment that
all I’d ever wanted to be was an actor.”
He also found love with fellow
student, Doorn Van Steyn. They were
married on December 9, 1946, when
Moore was just 19. Money was tight and
the marriage was tempestuous. “She
would scratch me. She threw a pot of tea
at me,” he told journalist Piers Morgan
in 2012. “I’d been sunbathing in the gar-
den, I came up and I’d taken off my
pants and I gave her some smart-alec
answer and this teapot came hurtling at
me. I said, ‘Right, that’s it, I’m leaving.’
“She storms off out of the room and
I hear the bath running. I thought,
‘What a cow, I’m leaving her and she’s
having a bath.’ So I smashed the bath-
room door open and she had all my
clothes in the bath and said, ‘Now leave
me.’ I waited for them to dry. The mar-
riage was doomed.”Clockwise from
above: with second
wife Dorothy
Squires; filming The
Spy Who Loved Me
with Lois Maxwell
in 1977; on the set of
For Your Eyes Only
with co-star Carole
Bouquet in 1981;
with third wife Luisa,
daughter Deborah
and son Geoffrey in- Below: getting
in character for his
first Bond role, Live
and Let Die.
LIFE STORIES