George Lazenby facts for kids

Quick facts for kids George Lazenby
Lazenby at the 2008 Big Apple Comic Con
Born	George Robert Lazenby (1939-09-05) 5 September 1939 (age 85) Goulburn, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1965–present
Known for	James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Spouse(s)	Chrissie Townson ​ ​ (m. 1973; div. 1995)​ Pam Shriver ​ ​ (m. 2002; div. 2011)​
Children	6 (1 deceased)

George Robert Lazenby (/ˈleɪzənbi/; born 5 September 1939) is an Australian actor. He was the second actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, playing the character in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Having appeared in only one film, Lazenby's tenure as Bond is the shortest among the actors in the series.

Beginning his professional career as a model, Lazenby had only acted in commercials when he was cast to replace original Bond actor Sean Connery. He declined to return in subsequent Bond films and instead pursued roles in films throughout the 1970s that included Universal Soldier (1971), Who Saw Her Die? (1972), The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss (1974), The Man from Hong Kong (1975) and The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977). After his career stalled during this period, he moved into business and invested in real estate.

Lazenby later appeared in roles that parodied the James Bond character. In 2017, a Hulu docudrama film, Becoming Bond, featured Lazenby recounting his life story and portrayal of Bond.

Early life

George Robert Lazenby was born on 5 September 1939 in Goulburn, New South Wales, at Ovada Private Hospital, to railway worker George Edward Lazenby and Sheila Joan Lazenby (née Bodel), who worked at Fosseys. He went to Goulburn Public School in his primary years, and Goulburn High School until 1954. His sister, Barbara, was an accomplished dancer. When he was young he spent 18 months in hospital after having an operation which left him with only half a kidney.

When Lazenby was about 14 he moved with his family from Goulburn to Queanbeyan, where his father ran a store. He served in the Australian Army, then afterwards worked as a car salesman and mechanic.

Early Jobs and Modelling

Lazenby moved to London in 1963 to pursue a woman with whom he had fallen in love. He became a used-car salesman in Finchley, and subsequently sold new cars in Park Lane, where he was spotted by a talent scout who persuaded him to become a model. He was soon earning £25,000 a year (£348,000 today). He was widely known for an advertisement for Fry's chocolate bars. In 1966, he was voted Top Model of the Year.

James Bond

Lazenby with Diana Rigg while filming On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969

In 1968, after Sean Connery had left the role of James Bond, producer Albert R. Broccoli met Lazenby for the first time while they were getting their hair cut at the same barbershop. Broccoli later saw him in the Big Fry commercial and felt he could possibly be a Bond, on which basis he invited him to do a screen test.

Lazenby dressed for the part by sporting several sartorial Bond elements such as a Rolex Submariner wristwatch and a Savile Row suit, which had been ordered, but not collected, by Connery.

Broccoli offered him an audition.

In July 1969, after making On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Lazenby returned home to Queanbeyan to see his parents. He said he had 18 films to consider. "But it's all commercial rubbish, such as the guy getting the girl at the end of the Battle of Britain," he said. "I'll just have to wait and see." He also told the press "I don't think I'm ready for anything like Hamlet yet but I'd love to play Ned Kelly."

Lazenby said he intended to make the next Bond film, which was to be The Man with the Golden Gun. However, by November 1969, and prior to the release of OHMSS, Lazenby said he no longer wished to play another Bond role, saying, "The producers made me feel like I was mindless. They disregarded everything I suggested simply because I hadn't been in the film business like them for about a thousand years." His co-star Diana Rigg was among many who commented on this decision:

The role made Sean Connery a millionaire. It made Sean Connery ... I truly don't know what's happening in George's mind so I can only speak of my reaction. I think it's a pretty foolish move. I think if he can bear to do an apprenticeship, which everybody in this business has to do – has to do – then he should do it quietly and with humility. Everybody has to do it. There are few instant successes in the film business. And the instant successes one usually associates with somebody who is willing to learn anyway.

Rigg was also quoted as saying, "I can no longer cater for his obsession with himself. He is utterly, unbelievably ... bloody impossible."

"I draw a veil over the chap," said Desmond Llewelyn (who played Q in 17 Bond films). "How can you expect someone who's never acted before ... to take on a leading role?"

Lazenby grew a beard and long hair. "Bond is a brute ... I've already put him behind me. I will never play him again. Peace – that's the message now," he announced.

He said:

I much prefer being a car salesman to a stereotyped James Bond. My parents think I'm insane, everybody thinks I'm insane passing up maybe millions of pounds. Nobody believed me. They thought it was a publicity stunt. But it's just me doing my own thing.

He later elaborated:

Fantasy doesn't interest me. Reality does. Anyone who's in touch with the kids knows what's happening, knows the mood. Watch pop music and learn what's going to happen. Most film-makers don't watch and aren't in touch. People aren't going to films because film-makers are putting out films people don't want to see. As for the so-called "Tomorrow movies" they are only tomorrow movies with yesterday directors ... Actors aren't all that important. Directors are. I'm terribly impressed with Dennis Hopper. I'd like to work for him. I also like Arthur Penn, John Schlesinger and Peter Yates ... What I'm going to do is look for a great director first, a good screenplay second. Meanwhile, no more Bond. I make better money doing commercials.

At the time of the release of OHMSS, Lazenby's performance received mixed reviews. Some felt that, while he was physically convincing, some of his costumes were inappropriate – "too loud" according to some – and that he delivered his lines poorly.

Others, however, have developed differing views in the decades since the film. In the 1998 book The Essential James Bond, Lee Pfeiffer and Dave Worrell write:

Although OHMSS was routinely dismissed by critics who cited Lazenby as a brave but disappointing successor to Connery, the intervening years have been notably kinder to both the film and its star. Indeed, due in no small part to Peter Hunt's inspired direction, OHMSS generally ranks among the top films with fans. Likewise, Lazenby has emerged as a very popular contributor to the series and has enjoyed large enthusiastic audiences during his appearances at Bond related events. In summary, OHMSS is a brilliant thriller in its own right and justifiably ranks amongst the best Bond films ever made.

Roger Moore made reference to Lazenby in his commentary for a 2007 DVD release of The Man with the Golden Gun:

I have a great deal of e-mail contact with George Lazenby; he's sort of in on the joke circuit ... that we simply send jokes to each other. OHMSS – very well made film – Peter Hunt – excellent, excellent, excellent fight stuff, excellent snow effects ... but I think the end result for George was that it was one of the better Bonds.

Lazenby was told by Connery in a restaurant "you were good".

Broccoli told the press shortly after the film's release:

I don't agree with the press. I think they should have given him A for effort. It's true he's not Olivier but Olivier could not play Bond in any circumstances... John Aspinall's mother Lady Osborne told me she thought he was the best of the Bonds.

Broccoli did admit that he found Lazenby's post-movie attitude annoying:

I find it incredible that a plum role can't be respected. We chose George because in his physique and his looks and his walk he was the best of the candidates. He had the masculinity. Looking at the film, to put it in an old Spanish phrase, one could wish he had less cojones and more charm.

Diana Rigg and George Lazenby

Although Lazenby had been offered a contract for seven movies, his agent, Ronan O'Rahilly, convinced him that the secret agent would be archaic in the liberated 1970s, and as a result he left the series after the release of On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969. After this role, Lazenby is claimed to have begun studying drama at Durham University's College of the Venerable Bede. though this was not reported on at the time.

Lazenby has portrayed James Bond several times over the years in numerous parodies and unofficial 007 roles, notably the 1983 television film The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. (in which his character is identified only by the initials J.B.), 1996 video game Fox Hunt (parts of which were reedited into a feature film) and an episode of The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents, entitled "Diamonds Aren't Forever". In 2012 Lazenby made a guest appearance on the Canadian sketch comedy series This Hour Has 22 Minutes, spoofing the 007 series in a skit called "Help, I've Skyfallen and I Can't Get Up". Lazenby was complimentary of the finished film in later years; "In retrospect it was well done. I can't say I was Richard Burton, or a great actor in it because it was my first acting experience, but I did carry the role. It was tough carrying the role after Sean Connery because he was good. I liked him. You've got to understand the story was good, and it had some substance while most of them, I hate to say, don't."

Post-Bond career

For a time there was some talk Lazenby would appear in a western, Deakin.

Lazenby made another film a year after On Her Majesty's Secret Service – Universal Soldier (1971), which he helped write. He said the movie was "anti-guns and anti-Bond... a [comedy] with no plot. It is really just a series of happenings which keep the audience entertained. This is the kind of film which is coming out in Europe now."

"After the Bond fiasco nobody would touch me," admitted Lazenby. "Harry Saltzman had always said, 'If you don't do another Bond you'll wind up doing spaghetti westerns in Italy. But I couldn't even get one of those. My agent couldn't believe it. But the word was out – I was 'difficult'."

Lazenby next appeared in the 1972 Italian giallo film Who Saw Her Die? opposite Anita Strindberg, a performance for which he lost 35 pounds and received positive reviews. He spent the next 15 months sailing around the world with Chrissie Townson which ended when she became pregnant with their first child, prompting Lazenby to settle down and try to re-activate his career as an actor.

In February 1973, he revealed that he had spent all of the money he had earned from playing Bond, had experienced two nervous breakdowns. He said if he had not left the role he would have been "locked up by now... You need mental conditioning to play Bond", he added. "I burnt some bridges behind me, and it was fun, really. I'm sort of glad I did it and I know I won't have to do it again. I can look back and laugh because I didn't hurt anyone — except myself."

Lazenby played a role in the BBC's Play For Today series in 1973, starring in Roger Smith's The Operation. He was meant to follow it with an Anglo-Italian western made in Turkey, followed by a film about rioting students in pre-Castro Cuba, but neither was made.

Hong Kong

In 1973, Lazenby said he was "flat broke" when he went to Hong Kong to meet Bruce Lee and producer Raymond Chow. They ended up offering him $10,000 ($65,900 today) to appear in a film with Lee, which was going to be the Golden Harvest film Game of Death. However this collapsed after Lee's sudden death – Lazenby was actually meant to meet Lee for lunch on the day Lee died.

He revealed he had been consulting an astrologer for four years. "Even before I made the Bond picture she said I would become famous, and that there would be big problems for a couple of years," he said. "Then she assured me that I would be back at the top of my profession by the end of 1973. It's absolutely fantastic, because everything she has told me has happened."

In the end, Lazenby did not make Golden Needles but shot three other films for Golden Harvest, Stoner (1974) (aka The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss), The Man from Hong Kong (1975) (also known as The Dragon Flies), and A Queen's Ransom (1976).

Australia

In the mid-1970s, he appeared in a number of television movies shot in his native Australia, and an episode of the local police drama series Matlock Police. He also returned to modelling, appearing in a number of advertisements for Benson and Hedges cigarettes.

A few years later he told an Australian magazine, "I got a few roles but nothing spectacular, yet I was ready, willing and able to work. I just don't think I'm going to make it here. If something good came along I'd stay, though."

Hollywood

Lazenby in 2014

In the late 1970s Lazenby moved to Hollywood where he started taking acting lessons and set about trying to reactivate his career. "I enjoy the States, to be quite honest about it," he said. "I've got an American wife and green card so I have the best of both worlds."

He appeared in a TV movie Cover Girls (1977).

In 1978 Broccoli described casting Lazenby as "my biggest mistake in 16 years. He just couldn't deal with success. He was so arrogant. There was the stature and looks of a Bond but Lazenby couldn't get along with the other performers and technicians." Sean Connery came to Lazenby's defence saying "I have known George for many years and arrogance is not in his character. Alas I cannot say the same for Cubby Broccoli."

"The interesting thing about that is – I've never met Sean," said Lazenby. "I don't know him at all. Once, years ago, he came to pick up someone who was staying at my house and I saw him through the door. That's all. But I always admired him. I tried to copy him when I played Bond because, after all, I wasn't an actor so I thought my best chance would be to try and be as close to Connery as I could."

Lazenby went on to add:

It hasn't been easy, trying to climb back... I admit I acted stupidly. It went to my head, everything that was happening to me. But remember, it was my first film... Now what I've got to do is live down my past; convince people I'm not the same person who made a fool of himself all those years ago. I know I can do it. All I need is the chance.

In 1978, he took out an advertisement in Variety, offering himself for acting work. "If I could get a TV series or a good movie, I swear I'd do it for nothing," he told a journalist. "People ask me if the Bond movie wasn't worth it if it got me into acting. It's true that it got me in, but it wasn't worth the ten years it cost me." The following year, he had a substantial supporting role in Saint Jack (1979), directed by Peter Bogdanovich.

Lazenby was particularly keen to do The Thorn Birds, but that project was not made until a number of years later and without Lazenby. He did manage to secure roles in Hawaii Five-O and Evening in Byzantium. The latter was seen by Harry Saltzman who offered Lazenby a leading role in a proposed science fiction film The Micronauts. "When I tossed Bond in after one movie he said he'd make sure I never got another job," said Lazenby. "Now he's offering me one. It seems that the 10-year sentence is up. Harry saw me in a TV show I'd recently made for NBC. He rang me up out of the blue and said, 'Now that was a lousy show, but one thought that you were ger-reat.'" However the movie was never made.

Lazenby made a guest appearance on the television series Superboy, as an alien disguised as Jor-El, in a two-part episode during the series' second season in 1990. He appeared with Sylvia Kristel in several new Emmanuelle films in 1993, many of which appeared on cable television. In 1993, Lazenby had a part in the film Gettysburg as Confederate General Johnston Pettigrew.

On 19 September 2013, comedian Jim Jefferies announced on Twitter that Lazenby would be playing his father in the upcoming second season of his FX network sitcom Legit.

In 2019, Lazenby starred as Dr. Jason Love in an audiobook version of James Leasor's spy novel Passport to Oblivion.

Personal life

While working as a car salesman at the age of 21, Lazenby fathered a daughter Jennifer with Maureen Powell, who was then an Australian Army Sergeant and a PE/fitness instructor at Royal Military College, Duntroon.

In 1973, Lazenby married his girlfriend of 3 years, Christina Ross "Chrissie" Townson (now Matser), an heiress of the Gannett family. They subsequently had two children, daughter Melanie Andrea Lazenby, born on September 13, 1973, and son Zachary "Zack" Lazenby, born on November 9, 1974, at Woden Valley Hospital (now Canberra Hospital) in Garran, Canberra, ACT. Zachary was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour when he was eleven and died at 19 in 1994. The two divorced shortly after in 1995. Melanie is a real estate broker in New York, working for Douglas Elliman. She married her partner Matthew McLennan, also an Australian, in an extravagant three-day wedding in New York. Matthew is co-head of Global Value team and a portfolio manager at First Eagle Investments.

In 2002, Lazenby married former tennis player Pam Shriver. They had three children, son George Samuel Lazenby, born on July 12, 2004, and twins Kaitlin Elizabeth "Kate" Lazenby and Samuel Robert "Sam" Lazenby, born on October 1, 2005. The family lived in Brentwood, California. In August 2008, it was reported that Shriver had filed for divorce from Lazenby. Documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court cite "irreconcilable differences". Their divorce was finalized in May 2011.

Filmography

Film

Television

Documentaries

Video games

Unmade films

• Deakin (1970) – A western film

James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973) and Never Say Never Again (1983) – he turned down Eon's first offer to return, while the second offer was not supported by the director. During a Q&A session at the Sydney 2014 Supanova pop culture expo, Lazenby stated that the reason was because he was too hairy at the time. Kevin McClory considered Lazenby for his rival Bond film but opted for Sean Connery when he agreed to do the film after initially refusing to return to the role.

• the role played by James Coburn in Duck, You Sucker! (1971) – he turned it down
• the part played by Gig Young in Game of Death (1978)
• John Cleese said he wanted to cast Lazenby as Jesus Christ in The Life of Brian

See also

In Spanish: George Lazenby para niños