Sean Connery Nearly Died Filming ‘Dr. No’

The Big Picture

• In the film Dr. No, Sean Connery’s dangerous car stunt nearly killed him. He drove under a construction crane, with only inches to spare.
• Connery used a stuntman for a less dangerous scene involving a tarantula, even though the species used was harmless to humans.
• Other Bond actors also faced near-death experiences on set, including Connery with live sharks and Roger Moore being burned by an explosive.

For many diehard 007 fans, Sean Connery and James Bond are nearly synonymous. The Scottish actor originated the character on screen with the first film in the ultra-successful franchise, 1962’s Dr. No, and though he had quite a bit of experience on the stage and screen before this film, the role of Bond catapulted him to overnight stardom. He would go on to play Bond in a total of seven films, finishing with 1983’s Never Say Never Again. His swagger and natural sex appeal helped sell the character, even when he was placed in undeniably silly situations. Connery also did most of his stunts, some of which proved to be quite dangerous. While filming a key action sequence in Dr. No, the star was very nearly killed.

The Car Chase Scene in ‘Dr. No’ Involved a Dangerous Stunt

The scene in question takes place about halfway through the film. The treacherous Miss Taro (Zena Marshall), who is secretly a double agent working for the villain (Joseph Wiseman), invites Bond up to her villa in the mountains in a plot to have him killed by the trio of assassins known as the Three Blind Mice (Eric Coverly, Charles Edghill, and Henry Lopez). As Bond drives up the mountain — not in his signature Aston Martin, which doesn’t appear until 1964’s Goldfinger, but in a Sunbeam Alpine convertible — the assassins begin tailing him. Bond hits the gas in an attempt to shake them off.

As the two vehicles race up the dirt road, Bond goes around a sharp bend to find a construction crane blocking the road. He drives under it, while the assassins swerve to miss it and go over the edge of a cliff. It’s not obvious in the final cut of the film, but Connery really did drive the little sports car under the crane — and almost lost his head doing it.

As director Terence Young — who headed three Bond films in total — recounted in a 1983 Rolling Stone profile of Connery, the actor tested the stunt ahead of time, driving the car under the machine very slowly to ensure that it would fit. It did, with about four inches to spare. However, Connery was driving much faster during filming — forty or fifty miles per hour, according to Young — and the open-top car was bouncing two feet off the rocky road. In a stroke of pure luck, the car took one final bounce just before going smoothly under the crane; otherwise, Connery would have been killed.

The stunt was producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli’s idea, whose relationship with Connery would eventually become contentious. In the Rolling Stone profile, Connery morbidly joked that perhaps Broccoli intended to cash in on an expensive insurance policy.

Sean Connery Used a Stuntman for the Tarantula Scene Even Though It Wasn’t Dangerous

Although he did most of his own stunts, Connery did use a stuntman for an earlier scene — ironically, a scene that wasn’t actually dangerous to film. Earlier in the movie, Professor Dent (Anthony Dawson), who is also secretly one of Dr. No’s henchmen, attempts to murder Bond by placing a tarantula in his bed. According to the commentary on the 2006 “Ultimate Edition” DVD release, the crew first attempted to film the scene by placing a sheet of glass between Connery and the tarantula. Still, Young wasn’t satisfied with the footage obtained that way. Instead, stuntman Bob Simmons stood in as a body double and the spider was filmed walking across his bare skin.

The implication in the film is that the spider’s bite is lethal, but in reality, there’s no record of a tarantula bite ever killing a human. Moreover, the species used in the film is likely one of the least dangerous in the world. Though it’s difficult to identify it with certainty in the dimly lit scene, most experts believe that the tarantula is a member of the Avicularia genus, a group of pink-toed tarantulas native to South America whose venom is mildly painful but not at all dangerous to humans. These species are so docile and harmless that you can buy them at PetSmart. Whether Simmons — who is uncredited on the film — knew that is unclear, but he later reported that the scene was the scariest he had ever shot.

‘Dr. No’ Wasn’t the Only Time a Bond Actor Was Almost Killed

Based on the stories that have come from the sets, it seems as though the 007 films have been plagued with mishaps. Daniel Craig famously broke his leg on the set of Spectre, and Connery himself had another near miss on the set of 1965’s Thunderball. The production used several live sharks during filming, as production designer Ken Adam told The Guardian in 2005. The sharks were kept in a saltwater pool at a rented villa where the underwater scenes were filmed, and the crew built a plexiglass tunnel for Connery to separate him from them.

However, as Adam recounted, they didn’t have enough plexiglass to complete the tunnel, and one of the sharks got into it while Connery was inside, forcing him to make a quick exit. “He never got out of a pool faster in his life — he was walking on water,” Adam joked. The sharks weren’t actually “Golden Grotto” sharks as villain Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) claims — such a species doesn’t exist — but rather tiger sharks, who can be aggressive and, unlike pink-toed tarantulas, have been known to kill humans.

Roger Moore Was Severely Burned on the Set of ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’

Roger Moore was also seriously injured while playing Bond, this time on the set of 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, where a mistimed explosive actually set him on fire. In the film’s climactic scene, Bond sits across from villain Karl Stromberg (Curt Jürgens), who shoots a rocket at the spy from underneath the table. As Moore told the BBC in 2014, the script originally called for Bond to stand behind the chair, but Moore thought the scene would be more dramatic if he sat in the chair instead.

Moore, however, didn’t realize that while the back of the chair had been reinforced with steel to protect him from the blast, the seat of the chair had not. The trigger-happy special effects coordinator shot the rocket off early, giving Moore little time to leap out of the way. The actor’s pants caught fire and he was badly burned, though, as he explained in an extremely funny interview with Dick Cavett in 1981, he gamely attempted to finish the scene, not realizing that the smoke he was choking on was coming from his bum. Ideally, playing a spy on screen shouldn’t be as dangerous as actual espionage. We still don’t know who will be the next actor to portray 007, but let’s hope he (or she) doesn’t face as many on-set mishaps as previous Bonds.

Dr. No is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S.

Watch on Amazon Prime