Sean Connery's 10 Greatest Movie Performances

Connery as a dashing, cheeky Robin Hood seems an easy piece of casting, but Richard Lester’s 1976 film takes a more interesting approach. After a shaky few years, the former Bond was ready for a new challenge, and playing the aging thief alongside Audrey Hepburn, who herself had been absent from the screen for a while, was a perfect part.

Robin And Marian is a love story first and foremost, and the producers struck on a great pairing in Connery and Hepburn. As Marian, Hepburn is her usual charming self; Connery, meanwhile, taps into something thus far rarely seen, a deep vulnerability which may come from the actor accepting his own aging, that he is no longer a Hollywood young buck.

The plot at large is one we all know - there are only so many spins one can take on the Robin Hood story - but the relationship at the film’s heart is what makes it all worthwhile. For all his looks and smouldering intensity, Connery played the romantic lead surprisingly irregularly - with the right scene partner, you can see just how good he was at it.