Far from the celebrity status he enjoys today, Connery was born to a working class family in the poor tenements of Fountainbridge, in Edinburgh, Scotland.
He was nine years old when he took his first job as a milkman to help support the family – one of many that included a butcher’s assistant, coffin builder and later a life model.
An avid football player at 16, he soon became a “big local hit with the girls” according to friend John Brady, who recalled: “He did better than most of us, without trying.”
It appeared to be a repeating trend of his life, those closest to him claimed, most notably after he developed “beefy shoulders” in his late teenage years.
Michael Feeney Callan, who penned the 1983 biography ‘Sean Connery: The Untouchable Hero’ claimed he was “socially hyperactive and aggressively girl-hungry”.
By the time the future star was in his early twenties, he had “developed into a fine hunk of a fellow, all shoulders” and had a “notable, trendy style of dress.”
It was claimed that Connery had “no strict preferences in the girls” he pursued at the time – mostly while at The Palais de Dance – which boasted “the finest, biggest floor in Scotland”.
Craig Veitch, a friend who knew him as ‘Big Tam’ back then, described the venue as “Mecca at the weekends” and gushed about Connery’s charm.
He claimed the future actor was admired for his impeccable dress sense and remembered his “classy semi-drapes, slim-fitting, single-button shirts and shiny shoes”.
Veitch added: “He was an eye-catcher and he had no shortage of dance partners that’s for certain.”
Callan went onto claim that Connery had an “appetite for ever changing partners”, which the writer was told by his old friends.
The biographer added: “A blonde this week, a redhead next – was, others suggest, insatiable.
“But he carried on his affairs with discretion and dignity that bordered on freakishness in Fountainbridge terms.”
Callan also said that some of those rendezvous occurred “behind the sweetie factory” while others reported to have been wined and dined at fancy restaurants.
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Around this time in his life, Connery had also got into bodybuilding – despite considering it an absurd proposition at first, while he trained at his local gym.
He admitted that his sole intention behind enrolling at Dunedin Amateur Weightlifting Club was to “look good and get the girls”.
Connery added: “I don’t know when I first envisioned myself as a sort of muscle-boy, a Scottish Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it must have been in my mid teens. “Teenagers are very conscious of their bodies anyway, and the rugged jobs I’d held helped build up those muscles.”
The attraction would continue into later life, even after his debut in the Bond film ‘Dr No’ in 1962 – one of seven installments he would star in.
He was voted ‘The Greatest Living Scot’ by the Sunday Herald and a EuroMillions survey proclaimed him ‘Scotland’s Greatest Living National Treasure’.
People magazine honoured him as the ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ in 1989 and a decade later awarded him ‘Sexiest Man of the Century’.
While the future star of James Bond is yet to be announced, Paddy Power lists James Norton of ITV’s ‘Grantchester’ as the current favourite.
He is followed by Richard Madden of HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Outlander’ star Sam Heughan, above Tom Hardy (Peaky Blinders), Tom Hiddleston (Marvel film Avengers) and others.