Sean Connery

This title provides visual biographies of cinema's greatest stars. Why is the only non-American on the AFI's prestigious list a Scotsman? Perhaps it's because Sean Connery's career, as international in its scope as it may have been, as global as may have been his appeal, made him a 'genuine movie star' without any petty disputation, pretension, or pandering to current fashion. Indisputably, Connery's incarnation of James Bond catapulted him to stardom and lay the foundation for the most successful franchise in motion picture history. Together Bond and Connery became larger-than-life; but it was Connery, not Bond, whose powerful presence went on to permeate scores of other roles. Connery can be as cool and charismatic as Steve McQueen, as elegant as Katherine Hepburn, or as generous as Frank Sinatra. Said Audrey Hepburn: 'There are only two great stars in my recollection who have not been changed by great massive success: Sean Connery and Lassie', and both of them Scottish. "The Movie Icon" series: people talk about Hollywood glamour, about studios that had more stars than there are in heaven, about actors who weren't actors but were icons. Other people talk about these things, Taschen shows you. "Movie Icons" is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. For each title, series editor Paul Duncan has painstaking selected approximately 150 high quality enigmatic and sumptuous portraits, colorful posters and lobby cards, rare film stills, and previously unpublished candid photos showing the stars as they really are. These images are accompanied by concise introductory essays by leading film writers; each book also includes a chronology, a filmography, and a bibliography, and is peppered with apposite quotes from the movies and from life.