![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/images\/sean-connery_louis-vuitton-ad.jpg\")
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From the Department of “No Frickin’ Way, How Could That Possibly Be?” comes the news that Wednesday was Sean Connery’s 80th birthday. Eighty<\/i>. Eight-oh.<\/p>\n
I’m having just a little bit of trouble wrapping my head around this concept. Granted, Sir Sean has never seemed exactly young<\/i> to me — he’s always been either fully mature (James Bond) or on-the-far-side-of-middle-aged-but-still-vital (Ramirez; Henry Jones, Sr.; Captain Ramius) — but to think of him as downright old<\/i>… well, that’s a tough nut to swallow. I’ve hero-worshipped this guy for a long time, you see, and a major part of his appeal for me personally has always been his physical presence, the intense aura of masculinity and confidence that he seems to radiate like body heat. He still has plenty of presence in that photo up there at the top of this entry, which is the most verifiably recent one I could find. It’s a Louis Vuitton ad photographed by the legendary Annie Leibovitz<\/a>; as usual, click on it to see it larger. But that photo is also two years old, and a lot can change in only two years when people advance into this age range. I’ve read<\/a> in a couple places that Sean experienced some unspecified health problems this summer, and that he now believes his acting days are finally, completely behind him. (He recently lent his distinctive voice to a Scottish-made animated feature called Sir Billi<\/i><\/a>, so at least his filmography won’t end with that miserable turd The League of Extraordinary Gentleman<\/i>. I had been hoping, however, that he would eventually step in front of the cameras again and turn in one final home-run performance that would be a fitting end to such a long, storied career. Ah, well…)<\/p>\n I guess none of us like to see our heroes diminishing, as old age inevitably causes them to do. Maybe seeing them fade reminds us that we, too, aren’t all we used to be. So while I honestly wish Sir Sean a happy birthday with many more to come, I do so with something of a heavy heart.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Department of “No Frickin’ Way, How Could That Possibly Be?” comes the news that Wednesday was Sean Connery’s 80th birthday. Eighty. Eight-oh. I’m having just a little bit of trouble wrapping my head around this concept. Granted, Sir Sean has never seemed exactly young to me — he’s always been either fully mature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}