Jason Connery as Ian Fleming in SpymakerJason Connery

Jason Joseph Connery was born on January 11, 1963 in London, England. His parents are both actors, Scottish-born Sean Connery and Australian-born Diane Cilento. The year Jason was born, his father had already starred as James Bond in Dr. No, and his mother received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role in Tom Jones. The couple's busy work schedules caused long separations, and they divorced in 1973. Jason lived with his mother in Wiltshire, England, and later attended the spartan Gordonstoun School in Scotland (the same boarding school that Prince Charles and Prince Philip attended), where he studied English, joined a coast guard auxiliary and acted in school plays.

Jason decided to become an actor, and spent time at the Bristol Old Vic drama school, then quit to join the Perth Repertory Theatre, where he did 6 plays in 6 months. His big break came in 1984 when he succeeded Michael Praed in the title role of the popular British tv series Robin of Sherwood.

That year, Jason was nominated for Australia's equivalent of the Oscar for The Boy Who Had Everything, which also starred his own mother Diane Cilento as his character's mother. In what was thought at first to be gimmick casting, Jason portrayed the author of the James Bond novels in The Secret Life of Ian Fleming (also known as Spymaker), which was shown in the US as a cable TV movie in 1990.

He fights living in Sean's shadow. "I realize that I'm always going to be compared to my father. There are innuendoes all the time. Should I spend my whole life justifying myself?" he told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. He has appeared in many movies and TV shows, and toured the UK in the play The Blue Room

Jason was married to actress Mia Sara (from Ferris Buller's Day Off) in 1996, but they divorced in 2002. Their son Dashiell Quinn was born in June 1997. The couple met during the making of Bullet in Beijing in Russia.

[Spymaker cover]


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