George Lazenby 50 years on from his first and only James Bond role
It is 50 years since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service introduced the world to Australia’s one and only James Bond, a strapping, handsome male model from Goulburn. George Lazenby, now aged 80, talks about what happened after the biggest role of his life.
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He famously quipped, “This never happened to the other fella,” but it’s also a fitting maxim for George Lazenby’s life.
The Australian actor has always gone his own way – from his incredible coup blagging the role of James Bond as a first-time actor, to deciding to ditch one of the world’s biggest movie franchises because he didn’t think it cool, to both seducing and annoying some of Hollywood’s finest leading ladies.
It is 50 years since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service introduced the world to Australia’s one and only James Bond, a strapping, handsome male model from Goulburn, starring alongside Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas.
Speaking from his home in Los Angeles, Lazenby, 80, regales the story of his unlikely casting.
Describing the process as the “biggest film test in history”, which reportedly included names such as Oliver Reed and Adam West, he says he beat the other 300 being tested partly because he was “so shit sure of himself” and partly because he knocked Bond villain and heavyweight wrestler Yuri Borienko out in a test fight and producer Harry Saltzman stepped over him and said, “We’re going with you”.
Lazenby, who had left Australia to follow a girlfriend to London, was a car salesman when he was spotted by a photographer and began working as a male model. The handsome Aussie found fame as the face of Fry’s Chocolate when he heard Bond producers were looking for a new star, following the departure of Sean Connery.
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Having never acted before, he cut his hair and visited Connery’s tailor, who he says sold him a suit the star didn’t want – “it cost £100 – in those days like 10 weeks wages” – and the rest is history.
But first he had to be polished, taking acting and walking lessons because “I walked like a swagman”. And he says he had elocution lessons with the same teacher as the then British prime minister Harold Wilson.
“He was often coming out when I was going in, and I said, ‘Who is that fellow?’ She said, ‘The Prime Minister.’ Half of England couldn’t understand him – he needed coaching more than I did.”
Despite On Her Majesty’s Secret Service now being viewed by many as one of the finest James Bond films, at the time, it received a less than positive reception. Sticking closely to the books and relatively gadget-free, not only was Bond a different actor, but the movie was a big departure too.
Lazenby got the reputation for being difficult – although he says he worked very hard including doing his own stunts because he thought all actors did – and earned the ire of co-star Diana Rigg, who called him “bloody impossible” and later “stupid” and “ghastly”.
What does he make of that?
“Diana Rigg? I never fell out with her, she fell out with me,” he says, maintaining she said they might get together if he didn’t go out with anyone else.
“I was messing with the receptionist at the hotel in the stuntman’s tent and she was walking up the path and the boys lifted the side of the tent up and there I was on the job. That blew it with Diana and me,” he says.
“It was one of those things.”
Not that it held him back, Lazenby says he used to “go through six girls a week in London”.
“It was the time of the pill, mini-skirts, the girls were crazy. You had to run and hide after a while.”
So is it true he has slept with 1000 women?
“It probably would be,” he says.
“There wasn’t anything better to do. I don’t know, I never counted but it went on from 1964 until 1980 when AIDS came in. I didn’t want to die for it.” Quite.
Disaster with Diana notwithstanding, Lazenby did settle down, first with wife Christina Gannett, with whom he had two children. The couple moved to Australia, but unable to find well-paying acting work, returned to the US.
In 1994 his 19-year-old son Zachary tragically died of a brain tumour and the couple divorced.
In 2002 Lazenby married tennis player Pam Shriver, with whom he has three children, and again briefly returned to live in Australia. They divorced in 2008. He also has a daughter, Jennifer, who lives in Perth.
Lazenby says he’d still like to come home.
“When my kids disappear on me, I’d definitely like to be in Australia.”
Despite it being every actor’s dream to score the role of James Bond as their first job, Lazenby turned down the offer of another, thinking the Bond phenomenon over.
“They offered me millions to do another one but I turned it down because hippies were in, I thought it was all over,” he says.
Considering half a century later the franchise is still going strong, with No Time to Die due out next year, any regrets on that decision?
“No,” he says, adding he’d do the same again, mainly because he wouldn’t have wanted that level of fame.
“I have had a great life. I wouldn’t have had the kids I have, or the friends I had – you meet different people when you are famous and wonder why they want to know you.
“I can walk around the street now without people saying, ‘Oh that’s Sean Connery.’”
And despite critics in the 1960s suggesting he could play Bond but nothing else, Lazenby has worked constantly since, including stints in General Hospital and the Emmanuelle TV movies.
“It’s really important to keep going – I can’t imagine a lot of people know I am still alive and if they do they think he’s 80, he’s probably in a wheelchair or something,” he says, laughing.
“But I am not. I’m still very active.”
He just completed audio spy drama Passport to Oblivion with Terence Stamp and says he’s open to whatever comes along, just like he’s always been.
“There’s plenty of work out there if I want it. If anyone wants to test me, go ahead, I am a lot better than I ever was,” he says, adding he’d love to make an Australian movie.
“I can still do the accent: G’Day mate, how are ya?”
Would that include a role in the next James Bond if it was offered?
“Well they wouldn’t, would they – but yes, sure I would do that,” he says, adding he hasn’t watched any of Daniel Craig’s Bonds.
“I haven’t seen them. They asked me to go on the red carpet and meet Daniel Craig, but I passed.”
He says he’d summarise his career as “an unusual but long one”. He can’t believe it’s been half a century since his Bond adventure began, not least because he was told as a child he wouldn’t live long.
“When I was three years old they took one of my kidneys out and the doctor told my mother I wouldn’t last over 12,” he says.
“Some kid at school sang, ‘You’re the guy who’s going to die,’ at me, so I thought there’s no way I’m going to die.
“I’ve been through quite a bit in my life and often wonder why I am still here, but I am.”
As his alter-ego once said: “We have all the time in the world.”
Originally published as George Lazenby 50 years on from his first and only James Bond role