George Lazenby

Early life in Australia

Lazenby was born in 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 until either 1953 or 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 worked as a car salesman and mechanic, before serving in the Australian Army.

Modelling

Lazenby moved to London in 1963 to pursue a woman he'd fallen in love with. He became a used car salesman in Finchley, then sold new cars in Park Lane. He was spotted by a talent scout who persuaded him to become a model, and he was soon earning £25,000 a year. He was best known for an advertisement for Big Fry Chocolate. In 1966 he was voted Top Model of the Year.

James Bond

In 1968, after Sean Connery had left the role of James Bond, producer Albert R. Broccoli first met Lazenby when they were getting their hair cut at the same barber. He later saw him in the Big Fry commercial and felt he could be a possible Bond, calling him in for 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. The position was consolidated when Lazenby accidentally punched a professional wrestler, who was acting as stunt coordinator, in the face, impressing Broccoli with his ability to display aggression. Director Peter R. Hunt later claimed:

In July 1969 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". At this stage Lazenby said he intended to make the next Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun.

Leaving Bond

In November 1969, prior to the release of the film, Lazenby announced that he no longer wished to play the role of James Bond, 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:

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:

He later elaborated:

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:

In Roger Moore's commentary for a 2007 DVD release of The Man with the Golden Gun, he made reference to George Lazenby:

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

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

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 began to study drama at Durham University's College of the Venerable Bede.

Lazenby has portrayed James Bond several times over the years in numerous parodies and unofficial 007 roles, most 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".

Although Eon Productions attempted on several occasions to cast Americans as Bond, most notably signing John Gavin for Diamonds Are Forever before pressure from the film studios forced Salztman & Broccoli to meet with Sean Connery and persuade him to return for one more Bond movie.

Post-Bond career

For a time there was some talk Lazenby would appear in a western, Deakin. He talked to the press about his use of LSD and marijuana and was involved in a well publicised incident helping a friend of his who was arrested in Germany. He grew his hair and a moustache and talked about rejecting the "trappings of materialism".

Lazenby eventually 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." It starred Chrissie Townsend, his 18-year-old girlfriend. The film was a financial disaster which was barely released.

"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 film, Who Saw Her Die?. He spent the next 15 months sailing around the world with Chrissie Townsend 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.

Lazenby played a role in the BBC's Play For Today series in 1973, starring in Roger Smith's The Operation. Broccoli claims that Lazenby asked for another chance to play James Bond in 1971 but the producer refused.

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 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 up with Lee for lunch on the day that Lee died.

Instead it was announced Lazenby would make The Golden Needles of Ecstasy for Golden Harvest. "I'm excited to be able to concentrate on just acting in this film", he said. "On Universal Soldier I was involved in the production, the writing and even a bit in direction. I don't think I'm a good enough actor to get fragmented like that on a job. Now I can give my full concentration to acting. I hope it will be good and lead to other roles."

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 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

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."

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."

He 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 5-0 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 damn 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 the 1990s, 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.

Influence on popular culture

Lazenby's single portrayal of the iconic Bond character, and his lack of standing as a favourite in the series has resulted in his name being used as a metaphor for forgettable, non-iconic acting efforts in other entertainment franchises, and for entities that are largely ignored. In his review of Batman & Robin, widely regarded as the weakest and least successful film in the Batman film franchise, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said that George Clooney "should go down in history as the George Lazenby of the series." Actor Paul McGann has described himself with good humour as "the George Lazenby of Doctor Who" because, although he has continued in the role of the Eighth Doctor in other media, he made only two appearances on TV as the Time Lord. In a September 2006 episode of The Daily Show, comedian John Oliver suggested that Pope Benedict XVI is the George Lazenby of the papacy, in comparison to "John Paul II's Sean Connery".

In 2010 Roger Moore, who also played James Bond, provided the voice of a talking cat character named Tab Lazenby in the film Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, which contained several references to, and parodies of, Bond films.

Personal life

In 1973, Lazenby married his girlfriend of three years, Chrissie Townsend, a member of the Gannett family. They subsequently had two children, Zachary and Melanie. Zachary was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour when he was eleven and died when he was 19 years old. Melanie became a real estate broker in New York.

In 2002 Lazenby married former tennis player Pam Shriver. In August 2008, it was reported that Shriver had filed for divorce from Lazenby. Documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court cite "irreconcilable differences" for the end of the couple's six-year marriage. The couple have three children, including twins born in 2005.

Unmade films

Roles originally offered to Lazenby