https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-13087132
Thomas Sean Connery was born in the Fountainbridge area of Edinburgh on 25 August 1930, the son of a Catholic factory worker and a Protestant domestic cleaner. His father's family had emigrated from Ireland in the 19th Century; his mother traced her line back to Gaelic speakers from the Isle of Skye.
The area had been in decline for years. Young Tommy Connery was brought up in one room of a tenement with a shared toilet and no hot water. He left school at 13 with no qualifications and delivered milk, polished coffins and laid bricks, before joining the Royal Navy. Three years later, he was invalided out of the service with stomach ulcers. His arms by now had grown tattoos which proclaimed his passions; "Scotland forever" and "Mum & Dad".
In Edinburgh, he gained a reputation as "hard man" when six gang members tried to steal from his coat. When he stopped them, he was followed. Connery launched a one-man assault which the future Bond won hands down. He scraped a living anyway he could. He drove trucks, worked as a lifeguard and posed as a model at the Edinburgh College of Art. He spent his spare time bodybuilding.
The artist Richard Demarco, who as a student often painted Connery, described him as "too beautiful for words, a virtual Adonis". A keen footballer, Connery was good enough to attract the attention of Matt Busby, who offered him a £25-a-week contract at Manchester United. But, bitten by the acting bug when odd-jobbing at a local theatre, he decided a footballer's career was potentially too short and opted to pursue his luck on the stage. It was, he later said, "one of my more intelligent moves".
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