Lana Wood, an actress and former Bond girl, says she felt beholden to formally put an end to her on-set affair with Sean Connery once she fell in love with someone else, but now considers that declaration naive considering they were never actually dating.
Wood and Connery’s romance began while filming Diamonds Are Forever in 1971, in which she played Bond girl Plenty O’Toole. The actress, who is also the younger sister of late Hollywood icon Natalie Wood, told Fox News this week, “I knew Sean. I had met him years ago. My boyfriend at the time was [film producer] Jerome Hellman who was friends with Sean. We were invited to dinner at his house and I remember him being fun.” She went on to say that the actor “was very magnetic. He was very charismatic and we just had a terrific evening. I felt so comfortable with him. I was completely at ease. So when I saw Sean walking through the lobby on the first day on set, I was delighted. I was a nervous wreck so I felt like I at least had one friend.”
That friendship quickly turned romantic, however, and the pair had a brief, passionate affair while filming until she ultimately called it off. Wood said that she felt like she needed to end it because she was in a “really lovely relationship with [composer] Leslie Bricusse.” She explained, “Leslie had gone back to London. And I just felt that I really had to tell Sean that this relationship would not continue because I was very much in love with Leslie Bricusse. I thought Sean was absolutely wonderful, but I couldn’t see him anymore. I had to tell him. So when I told him, he said, ‘I understand completely.’ And that was it. We were in the hallway leading to the casino getting ready to shoot. And I walked away. I finished the take and then went back to hair and makeup.”
But while things ended amicably between Connery and the Peyton Place star, she said it wasn’t until much later that she realized her confession was also completely unnecessary. “I just needed him to know,” she said. “And then many years later, all of a sudden, it dawned on me. He probably thought, ‘What a silly girl! Of course, we weren’t going to have a relationship.’ I just thought it was funny that I had to say something to him. But I had to be honest with him.”
Connery died on October 31, 2020, from heart failure due to pneumonia and old age, and Bricusse passed away in October of this year in France at age 90.
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