Sean Connery Almost Decapitated Filming James Bond Stunt
Sometimes actors insist on doing their own stunts. That was the case with Sean Connery in 1962’s Dr. No, the very first James Bond film. However, Connery almost, literally, lost his head while shooting a car chase scene.
Terence Young, who directed three James Bond films, told Rolling Stone all about the incident, before he passed away in 1994.
Fan will know the scene well; Sean Connery’s James Bond sees that he’s being followed by three assassins while driving up a mountain road in a Sunbeam Alpine convertible. A car chase ensues and Bond drives under an outstretched crane that’s blocking the road. He makes it, but barely, and apparently that’s what happened in real life too.
The stunt was producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli’s idea and he and Sean Connery would end up not getting along that well.
As Young explained, when they rehearsed the scene, Connery drove about five or ten miles an hour, just to see if he could go under it. He cleared it by about four inches. However, when it came to actually shooting the scene, Connery was going 40-50 miles an hour. Plus, the car was now bouncing in the air thanks to the road and the speed. Young said, “It so happened that the last bounce came just before he reached the thing [crane] and he went down and under — or he would’ve been killed.”
If you watch the actual scene in that James Bond film, it does look close. You see the back of Sean Connery’s head barely clear the crane.
The stunt was producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli’s idea and he and Sean Connery would end up not getting along that well. Connery even joked about the car chase close call saying that maybe Broccoli intended to cash in on an expensive insurance policy.
Sean Connery played James Bond in a total of seven movies and when it came to 1965’s Thunderball, Connery was almost hurt again.
Speaking of jokes (now that we know Connery wasn’t hurt), another funny fact to point out is that while Connery gave the green light to doing a dangerous stunt like the one already described, he used his James Bond stuntman for a scene where it was unlikely he’d be hurt at all.
In one scene from Dr. No, Professor Dent tries to kill James Bond by putting a tarantula in his bed. Sean Connery’s stuntman Bob Simmons stood in as a body double and the spider was filmed walking across his bare skin. Here’s the thing though; according to the The National Institutes of Health, despite the lethality of tarantula venom to insects and lab mice, there have been no reported human deaths due to toxicity from a tarantula bite.
However, driving 40-50 miles an hour in a convertible and hitting a low crane can kill you.
Sean Connery’s stuntman Bob Simmons stood in as a body double and the spider was filmed walking across his bare skin.
Sean Connery played James Bond in a total of seven movies and when it came to 1965’s Thunderball, Connery was almost hurt again.
As The Guardian reported in 2005, the production used live sharks during filming. They were kept in a pool at a villa where the underwater scenes were shot, and a plexiglass tunnel was built for Connery to separate him from the sharks, which were said to have been tiger sharks. However, there wasn’t enough plexiglass to finish the tunnel, and one of the sharks got into it while Connery was inside. Luckily, Connery made a quick exit and was not hurt.
