Obituary: Diane Cilento, Oscar-nominated actress whose career was eclipsed by marriage to Sean Connery

Diane Cilento, Australian actress, first wife of Sean Connery. Born: 5 October, 1933, in Brisbane. Died: 6 October, 2011, in Queensland, aged 78

DIANE Cilento was a feisty and volatile star of the Fifties who landed many challenging roles on stage and films. They brought her a certain international renown and certainly in some of her roles (Sally the country wench in Tom Jones, for example) she was excellent.

In 1962, she married Sean Connery just after he had been cast as James Bond and she was too easily labelled Mrs 007. However hard that might have been for an actress who had an identity and fame of her own, it created a mistrust and unsettled the relationship. Their divorce was acrimonious and the feud between Cilento and Connery was to continue until 2006, when in her autobiography (My Nine Lives) Cilento opened an unfortunate can of domestic worms.

Accusations and counter- accusations hardly did credit to either party. Her allegation that Connery had beaten her and his assertion in an interview, “I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman” all fuelled the media’s love of such prurient gossip.

The marriage was clearly turbulent and Cilento often stated that the demands on Connery to be Bond became too much. Following their split, she said: “The whole damn Bond thing took over our lives.”

Diane Cilento was the daughter of two prominent medical practitioners and was educated – and expelled at 15 – from a Brisbane convent school. She went to live with her father in New York and worked as a child actor.

She won a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she is remembered for her striking beauty. The director Michael Blakemore, a contemporary, recalls: “Diane was sharply intelligent and endowed with a swing of long, blonde hair and the big green eyes of a cat.”

Cilento first worked at the groundbreaking Royal Court Theatre in the early Fifties. She then won a studio contract with British Lion Films, appearing in Meet Mr Lucifer and The Admirable Crichton.

In 1955, she was cast opposite Michael Redgrave as Helen in Jean Giraudoux’s play Tiger at the Gates. Later, the play went to Broadway where Cilento was nominated for a Tony. She also appeared in a musical of Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson in the pre-London run, but she slashed her wrists and did not go with the show into London’s West End.

In 1957, she met Connery while both were performing in the BBC production of Eugene O’Neill’s play Anna Christie. Connery reportedly told a friend he liked her “incredible eyes”.

They married in 1962 in Gibraltar and their son Jason was born the following year. The two became very much icons of Swinging London. Cilento in her hot pants, thigh boots and broad-brimmed hats was always a striking figure.

But the marriage was a stormy affair and the gossip columns catalogued their problems. There were, however, lighter moments. In 1967, while filming the Bond movie You Only Live Twice, it was discovered that Mie Hama, playing Kissy Suzuki, couldn’t swim. So Cilento donned a black wig and frolicked in the pool.

But Cilento was seen in the Sixties in several films. For her sensual country girl in Tom Jones in 1963 she won an Oscar nomination. There were also fine performances in Rattle of a Simple Man, opposite Charlton Heston in The Agony and the Ecstasy and with Paul Newman in Hombre.

In 1973, she and Connery were divorced and both vehemently denied each other’s accusations. Some, for example, considered it unfortunate for Cilento to leave 30 years before she wrote her book. But it resonated with echoes of mistrust, misgivings and much vituperation. Cilento wrote: “It became impossible to have any sort of life… it got madder and madder with each film.”

In 1973, Cilento starred as Miss Rose in The Wicker Man, which was written by Anthony Shaffer. It was set in the Hebrides and filmed in various parts of Scotland – notably in the Dumfriesshire countryside, the Green Mann Inn in Creetown, St Ninian’s Cave and Culzean Castle.

Shaffer had made a fortune from the stage and film script of Sleuth and various screenplays (especially Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy). They married in 1985 and settled in Cairns, Queensland, where they built an arts centre. Latterly she had to nurse Shaffer after a brain tumour was diagnosed. Following his death in 2001, Cilento returned to the fray to ensure his mistress did not inherit all his money. She is survived by two children: a girl from an early marriage and Jason Connery. ROBERT MALCOLM