Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 45, 2016

Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930) is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award). He was knighted by Elizabeth II in July 2000 after receiving Kennedy Center Honors in the US in 1999. Connery is best known for portraying the character James Bond, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His film career also includes such films as Marnie, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, Highlander, Murder on the Orient Express, Dragonheart, and The Rock. Connery has been polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine and in 1999, at age 69, he was voted "Sexiest Man of the Century".

Thomas Sean Connery, named Thomas after his grandfather, was born in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, to Euphemia McBain "Effie" (née McLean), a cleaning woman, and Joseph Connery, a factory worker and lorry driver. His paternal grandfather's parents emigrated to Scotland from Ireland in the mid-19th century. The remainder of his family was of Scottish descent, and both his mother's parents were native Scottish Gaelic speakers from Fife and Uig on the Isle of Skye. His father was a Roman Catholic, while his mother was a Protestant.