Roger Moore, Debonair 007 in seven Bond movies, dies at 89

, the suave British actor who put romance before ruthlessness in his portrayal of James Bond in seven of the famous franchise’s films, has died. He was 89.

He died Tuesday in Switzerland “after a short but brave battle with cancer,” Moore’s three children said in a letter shared on their father’s Twitter account. “We know our own love and admiration will be magnified many times over, across the world, by people who knew him for his films, his television shows and his passionate work for Unicef, which he considered to be his greatest achievement,” they wrote.

For 12 years, from Live and Let Die (1973) through “A View to a Kill” (1985), Moore owned the role of Agent 007, the martini-drinking, lady-loving British spy. His take on the character was compared, inevitably, to that of Sean Connery, the original movie Bond.

“Gone were the macho toughness and ruthlessness of Connery’s Bond,” wrote Michael Di Leo in The Spy Who Thrilled Us: A Guide to the Best of Cinematic James Bond (2002). “In their place, Moore played up Bond’s suave and humourous side, and his films reflected this new tone.”

Moore’s take on the beloved film character generated mixed reactions, as reflected in surveys and polls done in 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary of Bond films.

A poll of Americans by CBS’s “60 Minutes” and Vanity Fair magazine ranked Moore as third-best of the six movie Bonds, behind Connery and Pierce Brosnan. He came in third, after Connery and Daniel Craig, in a survey by the UK’s Guardian newspaper. He ranked fourth, ahead of short-timers Timothy Dalton and George Lazenby, in a 2012 survey by NPR.

For his part, Moore said Craig, who took over the part in 2006, became his favorite Bond with Skyfall (2012).

In his 2008 memoir, My Word Is My Bond, Moore took issue with the rap that he — or anyone else, for that matter — could portray Bond too lightly.

He wrote of Bond: “How can he be a spy, yet walk into any bar in the world and have the bartender recognise him and serve him his favorite drink? Come on, it’s all a big joke.”

Roger George Moore was born on October 14, 1927, in south-west London, the only child of George Moore, a police constable and amateur actor, and the former Lily Pope. 

With his grammar-school classmates, he was evacuated to southern England from 1939 to 1941 to escape the German bombing of London.

At 18, following a year at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he was called to military service and served with the British Army in postwar Germany.

Back in London at 21, he acted in plays on stage and television, then moved to New York, where he found roles in two episodes of the television drama series “Robert Montgomery Presents.” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. gave him a film contract, and he debuted on the big screen in The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), with Elizabeth Taylor.

He got to kiss Lana Turner, in Diane (1956), before MGM cut him loose. He starred in the British TV series Ivanhoe in 1958-1959, then was signed by Warner Bros. Studios for films such as The Miracle (1959) and The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961). He joined the cast of Maverick, the ABC Western, in 1960 as its star, James Garner, was leaving.

Bloomberg