![]() I can't do the callisthenics any more as my back started to hurt about three years ago.' 'Each day I'd get up at 6am to do my exercises - callisthenics, sit-ups and all sorts of other regimes, as I hated gyms and much preferred to keep fit at home. The terrifying realisation that the pills were incredibly addictive was enough to prompt him to wean himself off them and work hard to get fit - without help. They gave me enormous energy and I didn't need to sleep - I was drugged up to the eyeballs.' He prescribed appetite suppressants stimulants. 'I've always loved food and I realised at one point that I needed to lose a little weight, so I asked a doctor for something to help. 'Bacon rolls for breakfast, steak-and-kidney pie for lunch, tea and buns and so forth. ![]() 'It's very tempting to over-eat all the bad things when you're on a film set,' says Sir Roger, referring to his role as Simon Templar in the TV series The Saint, which ran from 1962 to 1968. 'Why didn't you just cast a thin, fit fellow and avoid putting me through this hell?' he retorted.Ī strict diet and punishing exercise regime began. While actress Jane Seymour was warming up her tarotcardskills for the role of Solitaire in Live And Let Die, Bond producer Cubby Broccoli warned Sir Roger he needed to 'lose a little weight and get into shape'. Weight, or the abundance of it, seems to be a recurring problem for Sir Roger. Then came leading-men roles in the Fifties with MGM, which saw him star in the TV series Ivanhoe (1958) and films such as The Sins Of Rachel Cade (1961).īut what if he had not become a luvvie? 'I'd have opened a pharmacy, of course.' For after RADA training, he supplemented his income as a jobbing actor with work as a knitwear model. 'I was considered chubby as a teen,' he sighs. Sir Roger cannot let his teenage years go by without mentioning that he has always had a slight weight problem, despite standing at 6ft 2in. 'Oh, and then they whipped out my appendix in Hamburg.' Then there was the tonsillectomy, adenoidectomy, yellow jaundice and the time he split his jaw open in a Jeep accident as an 18-year-old doing National Service in the Army. Mumps, measles, chickenpox - 'I nearly died of double bronchial pneumonia at the age of five' - and unsurprisingly he shudders at the mention of chloroform, which was used to put him under for surgery to circumcise him at the age of eight after an infection. He catalogues the ailments and operations he suffered as an only child growing up in Stockwell, South London, which must have terrified his parents Lily and George, a policeman. 'I believe it is better to be prepared for illness than to wait for a cure,' he declares, 'and you certainly save on hospital beds that way.' Illness, he admits, has permeated every part of his life, although it is hard to distinguish whether the hypochondria that 'flows through my veins' started before the string of scrapes and near-death experiences that have punctuated his life. 'I was going to call it Out Of The Bedpan,' he joshes. However, the action hero and death defying-007 could not be more at odds with Sir Roger who, unlike most men, is refreshingly candid about his health - or lack of it - and even thanks some 18 doctors - 'just half of the number who have kept me going' - in his autobiography. Home for Sir Roger is typically Bond-like - in winter it's a chalet in the exclusive Swiss resort of Crans Montana, shared with his glamorous fourth wife Kristina then in spring it is in tax-exile haven Monaco and summers are spent in a house in the South of France. Today, the 81-year-old actor is best known for the film role he calls 'Jimmy Bond' -the part he played in six 007 films from 1973's Live And Let Die until his last, A View To A Kill, at the ripe old age of 57. 'If you don't have humour,' he says, still laughing, 'then you may as well nail the coffin lid down now.' Of all the things Sir Roger Moore has lost over the years (appendix, tonsils, adenoids, a sensitive snip in a circumcision and more recently his prostate), his sense of humour is not one of them. 'I am just off to the funeral parlour,' he continues. I had thought the interview was at nine o'clock. You are late,' says Sir Roger Moore in a deep growl. But behind the scenes he has cheerfully hidden a list of real (and imagined) ailment, writes Sarah Hartley for The Mail On Sunday. For most of his 81 years, Sir Roger Moore has played invincible leading men.
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