My Nine Lives by Diane Cilento
My Nine Lives, by Diane Cilento, is published in hardback by Viking, priced £20. Available now. From 1962 to 1973, actress Diane Cilento played a real-life role, for which countless women would have given their souls. She was the wife of Scottish actor Sean Connery, then at the peak of his screen fame as the legendary secret agent James Bond - also known as 007.
Cilento's marriage to the later-to-be-knighted star, by whom she had a son Jason - who also became a successful actor - is by far the most riveting part of her autobiography.
She says that on one occasion her husband bashed her twice in the face, because he disapproved of her having danced a wild and rather tipsy flamenco with others in a Spanish hotel.
This one-off violent incident between them, which they never subsequently spoke about to each other, seems to have permanently soured her attitude to Connery, although she says other factors ultimately led to their divorce.
It is an open question whether Bond-Connery fans will be unduly shocked by Cilento's revelation, given that 007's attitude to women represents unabashed male chauvinism of the rough-'em-up variety.
But of course Connery and Bond were separate entities and it is fascinating to read how the real man, living in his suburban home, differed from the fantasy figure he portrayed so memorably on screen.
Cilento was born in 1933 in Mooloolaba in Queensland, to a pair of distinguished doctors. In the 1950s she followed a well-trodden path from Oz to London (hers was via Broadway) and achieved considerable success on stage and screen in Britain, America and elsewhere.
In later years she settled back in her homeland, where she pursued spiritual advancement and enlightenment among like-minded people and also founded a successful theatre, the Karnak Playhouse, in the countryside in north Queensland.
Her third and last marriage was in 1985 to the brilliant but boozy British playwright and screen-writer Anthony Shaffer. We are told all about the highly-publicised battle over his substantial estate after he died in 2001.
This chatty and sincere book is a pleasant read, although irritatingly short on dates. It also contains a few whopping bloomers, but they will probably only be spotted by elderly theatre enthusiasts with long memories.
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