Roger Moore

Born: 14th October 1927
Where: Stockwell, South London

The actor is always likely to be saddled with the label "the actor who replaced Sean Connery as James Bond."

Moore - who had earlier won a legion of admirers as TV's The Saint - played 007 for a total of seven movies beginning with Live And Let Die.

Offscreen, he has won plaudits as a UNICEF ambassador and also landed the accolade of being the last guest star to appear on The Muppet Show.

The son of a housewife and a policeman, he attended Battersea Grammar School, but was evacuated to Holsworthy, Devon, during World War II, where he attended Launceston College and was then educated at Dr Challoner's Grammar School.

He then attended the College of St Hild and St Bede at the University of Durham and was subsequently called up for National Service when he turned 18.

He was commissioned as an officer and eventually became a captain, claiming that he was only promoted because he physically fitted the stereotype of an officer, rather than having any outstanding ability or leadership skills.

Moore served in the Royal Army Service Corps, commanding a small depot in West Germany and later transferred to the entertainment branch (under luminaries such as Spike Milligan).

His first experience of film was as an extra in the movie Trottie True, whose flamboyant director Brian Desmond Hurst has paid his acting college fees.

In the early 1950s, Moore worked as a male model, appearing in print advertisements for knitwear (earning him the nickname The Big Knit).

His earliest known television appearance was in 1950 for the BBC - his only appearance for them - in the Crimewatch-style one-off Drawing Room Detective.

Although Moore won a contract with MGM in the 1950s, he described his experience as NBG - No Bloody Good - with the high point a starring role in The Miracle (which had been turned down by Dirk Bogarde).

Eventually, it was TV where he in which Moore made his name with Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe and the part of Beau Maverick, an English cousin of frontier gambler Bret Maverick (James Garner) in Maverick.

Worldwide acclaim arrived in 1961 with his casting as The Saint, in a new adaptation of Simon Templar's adventures which went on to run for 118 episodes.

Moore subsequently made two films after the series: Crossplot, a lightweight spy caper and the more challenging The Man Who Haunted Himself, directed by Basil Dearden.

In 1969, he returned to TV alongside Tony Curtis in the cult seriesThe Persuaders!, a light-hearted chronicle of the adventures of two millionaire playboys across Europe.

(Moore was paid the then unheard-of sum of one million pounds for a single series, making him the highest paid television actor in the world).

Speculation surrounds his arrival as James Bond but Moore was not publicly linked to the role of 007 until 1967, when producer Harry Saltzman claimed he would make a good Bond.

He finally took up the licence to kill in 1973 with Live and Let and went on to become the longest-serving James Bond actor, having spent twelve years in the role (from his debut in 1973, to his retirement from the role in 1985).

He is also the oldest actor to play Bond: he was 45 when he debuted, and 58 when he announced his retirement on December 3, 1985, as it was agreed by all involved that Moore was too old for the role by that point (he had actually tried to leave the role after For Your Eyes Only).

His post-Bond acting career has been light with the dismal Bullseye and also cameos in Spice World and as a flamboyantly camp passenger in the comedy Boat Trip.

In 1983, shocked at the poverty while visiting India, he became interested in the Third World humanitarian effort and he consequently became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1991.

In 1999, Moore was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) on June 14, 2003.

The citation on the knighthood was for Moore's charity work, which has dominated his public life for more than a decade.