Moore's memoir: Being Bond was sometimes scary

[August 20, 2008]  NEW YORK (AP) -- It's not easy being Bond. Roger Moore, who starred in seven Bond films in the 1970s and 1980s, recounts his days as the dashing super-spy in his upcoming memoir, "My Word Is My Bond," and says things weren't always as they seemed.

"Jimmy Bond had a big jet boat chase in 'Live and Let Die,'" writes Moore, now 80. "I did quite a few run-throughs to practice, and whilst banking on one such run, the engine cut out. I had no steering! I therefore continued in a straight line ... directly into a wooden boathouse."

He instantly catapulted from the boat into a wall, cracking his front teeth and twisting his knee.

"There I was, as a fearless 007, hobbling on a cane to my boat and then pretending to be indestructible for the cameras. Who says I can't act?"

Moore replaced Sean Connery in the 007 franchise in 1973. His films include "The Spy Who Loved Me," "Live and Let Die," "The Man With the Golden Gun" and "A View to a Kill."

The book, due out Nov. 4, also recounts the time Moore bumped into a young Steven Spielberg at a Paris hotel.

"He was a huge Bond fan and said that he would love to direct one of the films," Moore says. "He'd recently had great success with 'Jaws' and 'Close Encounters' and was considered a very hot property. I was rather excited at this news and went looking for (film producer Albert R. 'Cubby' Broccoli) to tell him."

But Broccoli, who steered the Bond franchise over three decades, shook his head and asked, "Do you know how much of a percentage he'd want?"

"It's always been policy that no Bond director ever got a slice of the box office profits," Moore says. "So, Spielberg went off and made 'Indiana Jones,' who I reckon to be a period James Bond!"

[Associated Press; By CARLA K. JOHNSON]

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