Sir Sean Connery has passed away at the age of 90.

You have to admire a man who knows when it is time to call it a career.

Sir Sean Connery is the definitive James Bond. Every iteration has their actor who played the role and some are more beloved than others (poor George Lazenby), but every person who ever wore the tuxedo was compared to Connery and was found to be lacking at something. And while he played other roles and did them well he was both defined and in some ways trapped by the legacy of Ian Fleming.

What some don’t know is that Connery made a conscious choice to stop acting years ago. If you look at his IMDb page you’ll see his last credit is 2012. That was his decision. Sean Connery famously turned down the role of Gandalf in Lord of the Rings and The Architect in The Matrix (there are rumors he also turned down Morpheus but I cannot find confirmation of that). He turned down both roles because he didn’t understand the scripts. Instead he did The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, an experience so arduous that, combined with the films he didn’t do, he washed his hands of the entire business.

Sean Connery played an Irish beat cop, a Russian submarine captain, a Spanish immortal, and so many other roles. And never once did he feel the need to change his dialect or his accent. I guess once you’ve achieved perfection you don’t need to regress.

Sir Connery was 90 years old.