You know what’s great about Sean Connery … aside from everything, I mean? He’s got that unbearably smooth cool thing, that burly roughness thing, and that seething ferocity thing going for him and they’re all good. Incredibly good, I grant you, but that's not what’s truly great about the Scottish actor who's been on stage and screen since the 50s.

What’s great about Connery, Sean Connery, is that no matter his age, he projects a wonderful daddy-thing.  Even when he was clumsy and gawky in (shudder) Darby O'Gill and the Little People, he had this smoky primal thing going on.  Yeah he looked like his voice might have just broken but even then you knew that he’d be the one slapping you on the back while you sipped a pint at the bar, or the one playfully wrestling you for the check when it was time to drunkenly stumble home.

Even during the years he was shaking-not-stirring his martinis, he had a dark edge, an almost brutal dynamism. You could still see that there was a playfulness there, though; a rough and tumble kind of fun streak. You could see him horsing around with the stunt guys, trading rude jokes with the extras, and leading the bit players in drinking games. 

Mr. Connery exudes class and a kind of burly elegance, but more than that there’s a realism he always brings to whatever he does.  It’s there in The Man Who Would Be King, there in Murder on The Orient Express, there in The Molly Maguires, and even in the surreal weirdness of Zardoz (where he spent most of the film in a very weird, and hot, outfit): a presence that’s fifty percent brilliant actor and fifty percent Sean Connery just being his usual down-to-earth, just-one-of-the-guys, self.

And he’s gotten better as he’s gotten older.  He still has that rough edge, that punch-you-in-the-shoulder manliness but he’s also developed an even more (if that’s possible) fatherly aspect.  Yeah, you could see the 60s and 70s Connery as the perfect daddy but also one that might be as much a competitor as a kind hand and a sweet touch. But the 80s, 90s and current Sean has become a real dad, a true father figure.

Just look at him in The Hunt for Red October. Here's a Soviet sub captain with a thick Scottish accent, acting like a mighty king and a powerful leader, but there’s also a tenderness as well, a caring for the men under his command.  Watching him, you also want to follow him wherever he goes because you know he won’t just get you there – he'll care that he got you there safe and sound.

It’s no surprise Mr. Connery has become a fantasy for so many. I hear even the ladies like him...  Seeing him on the screen, or even just a casual snapshot, you can too easily see him as the daddy you’ve always wanted: a firm but lovable, rough but caring, down-to-earth but carefully sensitive guy you could turn to for a good time or just be with and know – like with all good fathers – that you’re loved and cared for.