NEW YORK -- Oh, what a tangled web we weave, muses actor Sean Connery, when it comes to affairs of the heart.
In his latest flick, Playing By Heart, opening Friday, the former Bond man plays a long-married hubby who makes a confession to his wife (Gena Rowlands) that threatens their 40-year union.
"The whole unravelling of relationships in the film and the ravelling together at the end is quite clever," says Connery, with that famous Scottish burr that has become the actor's macho, sexy trademark.
But at 68, sexy is as sexy does. And Connery, who was named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive at age 59, still does it good.
As Ian Fleming's martini-sipping James Bond, Connery embodied a tall, suave sexuality. A quality, he points out, that shouldn't be ignored in his twilight years.
With an ensemble cast also including Gillian Anderson, Dennis Quaid, Ellen Burstyn, Madeline Stowe, Jay Mohr and Anthony Edwards in an intertwining plot of love, lust, and commitment issues, Connery and Rowlands stand out as representatives of romance in the older generation.
"Eighty percent of people's response to this film has been the question of the age and the length of their 40-year relationship," Connery complains. "It's like Kafka's trial to hear them discussing it. It's as if it's not normal cinema. You don't make movies about people that age with that kind of problem."
Adds co-star and screen wife Gena Rowlands: "There are a lot of people who walk around and think at 40 its over!"
Connery, anyway, doesn't usually make movies about marriage and affairs of the heart.
After giving up James Bond in the '70s, the charming actor spread his charm in films like The Wind And The Lion, The Man Who Would Be King, and Robin And Marian -- before giving Bond one last breather in Never Say Never Again in 1983.
In 1987, his career took a more wizened, father-figure turn in the road when he played an aging Irish cop in The Untouchables (for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar), followed by roles in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade and The Hunt For Red October.
Of all his parts, he says, he can clearly choose a favourite: "I like The Man Who Would Be King the best, with Michael," he says.
An introspective relationship film like Hearts, with no fast vehicles or fast women chasing him, seems, well, out of character for him.
"People ask me, 'Well, do you think it's a great departure for you playing a role like this?' " he asks.
"Well, I'm acting my age, I suppose. I've always acted older anyway. Maybe I should have been in that film made by Hume Cronyn -- Cocoon."
But if it's a departure, it's one that is keeping with the times, he notes. And it's the Hollywood way.
"With America, it goes with the Bill of Rights, I suppose," he says, comparing the more reserved British to the therapy-driven U.S.
"There's a kind of freedom of speech and expression here. A letting it all hang out (about relationships). That's American! But all the emotions in the film are universal."
When it comes to his own homeland, Connery has had an emotional time of it of lately.
While his favourite role on screen may be The Man Who Would Be King, it seems in Great Britain, Connery will never be dubbed 'Sir'.
Snubbed by the Queen this year by not being nominated, once again, to be knighted like co-hort Anthony Hopkins, Connery seems agitated, but accepting.
Reasons for the snub range from Connery's outspoken belief that Scotland should be independent of Britain, to complaints that Connery has lived as a tax exile outside Britain since 1974, to comments the actor made to Playboy magazine in 1966 about his views on violence towards women.
"I don't like the turn it has taken now when they drag up something from the past about my violence towards women," Connery told The Houston Chronicle recently.
"If they want to do a character assassination on me, that's their way of justifying saying, 'Well, we shouldn't give it to him.'
"And I am fed up being told I don't pay taxes. I pay taxes more than most people in the U.K."
Offscreen, Connery may be too bold to become a knight.
But onscreen, according to director Steven Spielberg, Connery rates as "one of the only seven genuine stars in the world."
THE SEAN CONNERY FILE
ON THE FILM'S ORIGINAL TITLE: "They changed it from Dancing About Architecture because they thought people would confuse it with the recent Meryl Streep film with 'dancing' in the title (Dancing At Lughnasa). I don't think they credit the public with too much intelligence."
ON CHOOSING PARTS: "In most cases, the timing is the most important thing."
ON GOING TO MOVIES: "I love going to the movies. But most of the movies I like never seem to make it too well."
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