LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Before Sean Connery became the first actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond on film, the Scotland native spent his early 20s lifting weights and doing various odd jobs, which even included being a nude model for a famous art school in his country. Connery died at the age of 90 in 2020 and starred in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983.

“You used to do nude modeling as a young man, is that true?” Jay Leno asked Connery in a 1999 interview. The actor did not forget his humble beginnings as he acknowledged his past.

Sean Connery did nude modeling 'to make ends meet'

“At the Edinburgh College of Art, to make ends meet if you know what I mean,” he said, adding, “There was three of us, actually. There was an old guy who’d done it for years and years, and a quite an attractive young woman and myself. And we were the three models.” The class was “mostly women,” Connery told Leno. “We used to get six and eight pence an hour for standing stationary and with 15 minutes off,” he said.

One of the paintings from 1951 has since resurfaced on various platforms which shows Connery, then 21, in a semi-nude state, just a decade before he would be cast in his first of seven Bond movies, 'Dr No'. The oil painting was discovered nine years ago among the old canvases of a veteran British artist.

According to People, Connery was bodybuilding at the time and entered the Mr Universe pageant in London a couple of years later, where he came third. A fellow bodybuilder, while he was competing there, told him that auditions were being held for the show 'South Pacific'.

Sean Connery lied to get role

The legendary actor admitted that he lied about having acting experience to get the role. “I’d no experience whatever, and hadn’t even been on a stage before, but it turned out to be one of my more intelligent moves,” Connery said in a 1965 Playboy interview, according to Huffington Post. Arnold Schwarzenegger described Connery as “one of the greatest actors of all time”. “He provided endless entertainment for all of us & inspiration for me,” Schwarzenegger tweeted when the actor died, adding, “I’m not just saying that because he was a bodybuilder who placed in the Mr. Universe contest! He was an icon. My thoughts are with his family.”