Moore happy to do some good for a gritty cause

By Bruce Emond

JAKARTA (JP): Roger Moore is no international man of mystery. He is, as we all know, the man with the golden gun, the spy who loved me, the cool Brit who was too much of a handful for Octopussy, the man who uttered the immortal words "Bond, James Bond" in seven blockbusters in the 1970s and 1980s.

He was OO7 for 13 years, after Sean Connery and George Lazenby, and before Connery (again), Timothy Dalton (the second Lazenby?) and Pierce Brosnan. While Connery was a rugged Bond, a rough diamond doing his bit for British intelligence, Moore played Ian Fleming's creation as a suave sophisticate with a taste for the ladies, a cheeky way with a double entendre and an ironic wink to the audience that all the goings-on were just fun and games.

Like Brosnan (Remington Steele), he came from a successful role in a TV whodunit series, playing the perfectly handsome Simon Templar. Before that he had also been under contract at various studios during the waning years of the Hollywood studio system in the 1950s.

It's hard to believe he is 73, but then the perennially youthful Moore was 45 when he made his debut as Bond in Live and Let Die. Although he is not as quick on his feet as he once was (he battled prostate cancer in the early 1990s), he is still a charmer, with that distinctive, satiny English accent.

He has a different role today, as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador in the cause for iodized salt, which brought him to Jakarta last week. His famous name opens even the highest doors (how many movie actors can land audiences with a country's president, vice president and House speaker all in the same day) and he still knows his lines, talking effortlessly about the particular problems of iodization of salt in Indonesia and the health risk from a lack of iodine in the diet, especially for the young.

Here is an excerpt of an interview where he talked about his work with UNICEF, his acting career and whether the genteel Mr. Bond still has a place in today's world.

How has your trip been so far?

We had three very positive meetings with the President, the Vice President and with the speaker of the House. They all expressed knowledge on the subject; the Vice President was particularly interested in the demonstration (of the difference between iodized and noniodized salt). And then we had press conferences -- they're very big on press conferences here!

When did you first become involved with UNICEF, in the 1960s?

Well, I did the occasional greetings card promo, but I was not involved with UNICEF as such until 1990 when Audrey Hepburn asked me if I would cohost the Danny Kaye Children's Awards, in Amsterdam at the time ... Audrey asked me to come a day earlier than the actual telecast to take part in the press conference, but I thought I didn't know enough about UNICEF to handle the press conference.

Of course, at the press conference they only wanted to talk about movies, but Audrey wouldn't let them, she wanted to talk about UNICEF, about children's issues. It was her passion, and subsequently of other people, my peers, Harry Belafonte and Peter Ustinov. I sort of had to find out what all those statistics actually meant ... there is an interesting quote from Stalin: "A million deaths is a statistic, one death is a tragedy if it is someone you know".

Putting a face on the tragedy ...

So, from all the statistics I had there were no faces and no names. The only way I could find out them was to actually sign on with UNICEF, to go out into the field ... they tried me out, to see how I would take it, how I would get along with the whole thing. And I must say from the first moment I was hooked.

So what has it meant to you ... ?

It means you really want to make your involvement active, not just passive, and just sit back and say, "Oh, it's deplorable" -- you really have to do something about it.

And I remember being in Central America, and going to Honduras and El Salvador and Guatemala and Costa Rica, and becoming very aware of the smells associated with the poverty, the appalling sight of the favelas, the lack of sanitation, the lack of access to safe drinking water, the malnutrition ... All of those lingered ...

And then getting back to America, and at a press conference at Dallas airport on my way through ... somebody said (affects a broad accent of the American South) "Well, what would you say if someone was to say to you, 'well, we have poor in this country'". I would say kiss my arse, because the poor in your country are multimillionaires compared to the poor man in a developing country.

Well, they didn't like me saying kiss my arse!

You talked about Audrey Hepburn -- she was very influential in you joining UNICEF?

Yes, she was the key influence in my becoming a part of it, because it was her passion that made me curious to find out why she was so passionate about it. And she was so eloquent in expressing her emotions about it, and her feelings on what should be done.

And she made a remarkable impression on the world, when you think she was only a goodwill ambassador for three years.

And that enduring image of the photo of her hugging a refugee in Africa.

Yes. I remember reading a newspaper and seeing a photograph of Sophia Loren representing the UNHCR, and the newspaper article accused her, and film stars in general, of using the poor, the destitute, and the maimed, for photo opportunities.

And I was highly incensed by that, because to me it was an insult to Audrey's memory. Because I believe that Audrey could have lived for many more years -- that she would have still been here today -- if she had taken care of the cancer that was eating away at her but probably didn't know it. And instead of having treatment, she was in the Sudan, in Somalia ...

If we could talk a little about your movie career, did you feel that because you were so good at playing the suave, sophisticated man that it actually went against you in getting the meatier roles? The only role I think that was a bit different from the James Bond-Simon Templar character was in Ffolkes? (He played an underwater expert battling itnernational terrorists.

Oh, Ffolkes, that was fun to do. Those are what I call the acting parts -- the others are the nonacting parts, the straight parts, where you are playing an extension of your own personality that fits the part.

Not that I'm a hero -- I'm not, I'm an abject coward, I hate guns, I hate explosions. I think my talent was not looking afraid.

I think your talent was also that you shared with the audience that all this is just a game.

Because I think that type of hero is just a joke. I don't believe in him, and hope that the audience will laugh along with me, and not at me. But when you get a chance to put on a beard, or a false nose, that's what I call acting because you have something to hide behind ...

But your looks were a hindrance to you getting the parts ... that were a bit different?

Well, the parts that I would like to have got, I didn't get because I looked too clean-cut. Which is fine -- they have, I suppose, been financially the most rewarding, if not emotionally. And your bank manager is happy, your agent is happy and you make a living.

And I'm very grateful I had this success, because it has been some use to me being a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. Because you are interested in talking to me, like you said about UNICEF, which your paper is very pro, but also talking about movies. So if I had not done those things you wouldn't be interested in me, if I was an assistant bank manager ...

What was your favorite role?

Probably, one of the few times when, oddly, I had a mustache, in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), in which I played a doppelganger of a man who saw himself and suddenly discovered that it wasn't really him, that he had died on the operating table, gone away and come back to find that he had not really been missed because someone had taken his place. It was an interesting idea. And from the Bond movies, The Spy Who Loved Me.

And who was your favorite Bond woman?

Then you are playing favorites. But one actress, the Swedish actress Maud Adams, who did two Bonds, The Man with the Golden Gun and she played Octopussy. I enjoyed Maud very much.

Your image is the quintessential Englishman, the James Bond. In this day and age is there still a place for Bond?

Well, apparently from the figures at the box office, all the latest Bonds have made a lot of money. People are still very curious about Bonds. The old Bonds are still in replay all the time, And the videos and DVDs sell -- thank goodness because otherwise I wouldn't be able to be a goodwill ambassador on US$1 a year tax free!

Do you have any career regrets?

I don't regret not playing Lear!