Sean Connery’s lifelong friend on his trip from the Portobello baths to Hollywood

He was the morning milkman in the streets of Auld Reekie, the youngster who polished the coffins and kept order at the ball gate.

He was a gunner in the Royal Navy, a Portobello Pool Guard, and undressed to become a pose pouch for students in the Life Drawing class at Edinburgh College of Arts.

He was also the greatest movie star the country had ever seen.

Sir Sean Connerys’ career spanned seven decades, from the day he first stepped onto the stage in Edinburgh, to becoming one of Hollywood’s biggest and most enduring names.

Connerys’ triumph not only created an international shorthand for the definition of Scots, but it revealed to generations of working-class Scottish sons and daughters of truck drivers and factory workers like him that ambitions beyond daily expectations were not reserved for others.

His unadorned masculinity, built on a winning blend of courage and charm, made him the kind of man women wanted and men wanted to be.

When his childhood pal, Richard Demarco, saw bodybuilder Connery guard the Portobello Baths pool at age 20, he knew what he was looking at.

It was gorgeous to get on and off all dressed in white, like a Hollywood star even then, said artist Richard, who had a long-standing friendship with the actor since they played football together at age 11 in the Towerbank Primary playground in Portobello.

I knew him as Tommy Connery. He used to come for coffee at my father’s cafe, The Rallye, in Fountainbridge.

But I really knew him when he was a model at the Edinburgh Art School. We shared sandwiches during the break. I was the only person there who knew him as a friend.

It was at Richards’ suggestion that Connery landed a small role in a production of Sixty Glorious Years at Edinburgh’s King Theater in the early 1950s. He didn’t need to act, just stay there. They wanted men over 6 feet to be guards. I suggested that he give up being a model because he would make more money doing this.

Actress Anna Neagle was so in love with Connery that she insisted he be on tour with the series, which resulted in her being cast in a South Pacific production.

That was the start, said Richard, who founded the Traverse Theater in Edinburgh. I have an entry in my journal from that time saying: Today I suggested that Tommy Connery give up being a model. I like to think I played a part.

After a decade of making ends meet as an actor in London, Bond made Connery an instant name.

And although he feared being typed 007 he never was, instead he became a brand name working with some of the best directors in the business, from Hitchcock to Spielberg, in a Oscar-winning career that spanned 50 years, until his last salvation. in the 2012s, Sir Billi.

Back in Edinburgh, the up-and-coming actors watched.

Greg McHugh, Gary: Tank Commander, said: I met him when I volunteered at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

“I was obsessed with Highlander. Meeting James Bond was cool, but meeting Ramirez from Highlander was even cooler.

Despite all the jokes about his accent, it never mattered. He was a real movie star.

Although he never returned to live in Scotland, Connery’s bond with the house has remained strong. He even managed to straddle both sides of the Old Firm division, spotted in Celtic and Rangers games.

His friendship with former Rangers owner Sir David Murray is rumored to be born after someone at Celtic Park thought a Connery impersonator was on the phone trying to get tickets to a derby.

When 007 called Ibrox he got to Murray and so began the regular dating of Celtic fans across the Glasgow football division.

Politically, he was more resolute. As one of the SNP’s first famous supporters, he remained a champion of Scottish independence. Actress and political activist Elaine C Smith met Connery at a dinner party at Bute House in the years leading up to the referendum.

She said: There was a bravery and a cheek about his support for independence, because when you’re a star like him, you avoid being political because you don’t want to make noise.

I think sometimes there was a certain snobbery because he did Bond and not Shakespeare. Then he comes out and says he supports independence, so you can imagine how it was in the arts clubs in Edinburgh.

But she added: When he made those comments about slapped women, I remember going there, For God’s sake, Sean. It was horrible but it was typical of a generation and a certain type of man.

Jonathan Watson, his Two Doors Down co-star, said: When you look at the road he’s taken to reach the top of the industry and think about what he’s accomplished, I don’t see a other Scots repeat this success.

Edinburgh actor Andy Gray remembers when Sir Sean came to Perth for tea with his parents after visiting their son.

Gray said: My mom was excited, my dad was like: What the whole thing is, it’s just a man.

“Two hours later he pulled out a bottle of malt and they shared it. Mom never washed the glass and it sat on the fireplace for years.

As the country reflects on the loss of the star once voted Greatest Scotsman alive, Richard Demarco will mourn his friend.

I was so happy that he turned 90 and passed away peacefully in his sleep, as he had a combination of illnesses over the past 10 years, said Richard.

It’s the end of an era and I feel like I lost a member of my family. He has achieved great things against all odds. He was much more than James Bond. He was a serious actor.