About Me
George Lazenby was born in Queanbeyan, Australia, and served in the Australian Army Special forces and as a military unarmed combat instructor. He moved to London in 1964 as a model, then as an advertising actor. By 1968, he was the highest-paid male model in the world (reportedly, in 1967, he made £40,000 directly from modelling, and £60,000 from commercials and product endorsements — equivalent to more than one million pounds in 2004); he was also the European Marlboro Man.In 1968, Lazenby was cast as James Bond, despite his only previous acting experience being in commercials, and his only film appearance being a bit-part in a 1965 Italian-made Bond spoof. Lazenby won the role based on a screen-test fight scene, the strength of his interviews, fight skills, and audition footage. A chance encounter with Bond series producer 'Cubby Broccoli' in a hair salon in 1966, in London, had given Lazenby his first shot at getting the role. Broccoli had made a mental note to remember Lazenby as a possible candidate at the time when he thought Lazenby looked like a Bond. The lengths Lazenby went to, to get the role included, spending his last pounds on acquiring a tailor-made suit from Sean Connery's tailor, which was originally made for Connery, along with purchasing a very Bondish-looking Rolex watch, and an Aston Martin DB5 car, the Bond car at the time.Lazenby quit the role of Bond right before the premiere of his only film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), citing he would get other acting roles, and that his Bond contract, which was fourteen pages thick, was too demanding on him .In the 1970s, Lazenby worked in Hong Kong with Bruce Lee. A planned luncheon meeting with Lee and Raymond Chow to discuss a movie project for the upcoming Golden Harvest Lee film Game of Death 1978 collapsed after Lee's sudden death, although Lazenby would still go on to make 3 of the 4 films he signed to do with Lee in Hong Kong, The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss (1974), The Man From Hong Kong (1975) (also known as The Dragon Files), and A Queen's Ransom (1976). Lazenby was only featured with archive footage when Game of Death was finally released in 1978, after a 5-year delay caused by Lee's death while it was still in production.Lazenby's Hong Kong martial arts action films were very successful financially and are to this day considered classics of the genre, but without Lee the films didn't have much commercial impact. For example, it is widely believed that all four of the planned Lee/Lazenby films would have grossed in excess of $100 million US at the box office worldwide in the early to mid 1970s (astronomical grosses in today's dollar values), which would have even rivaled the James Bond franchise at the time. Lee's death effectively derailed Lazenby's would-have-been comeback after he had quit the role of James Bond in 1969.He then focused on business and real estate investments and ended up owning properties in Hawaii, Brentwood, California, Australia, and a 600-acre (2.4 km²) ranch estate in Valyermo, California, a small town about 17 miles southeast of Palmdale, California; he also owns a portside penthouse apartment in Hong Kong, and an estate home in Maryland. Lazenby had a son, Zachary (who died from brain cancer at 19) and an adult daughter, Melanie, from his first marriage to Christina Gannett Townson, heiress to the Gannett Newspaper Publishing empire. Melanie is a Vice President at a real estate firm in Manhattan.In 2002, Lazenby married his second wife, former tennis player Pam Shriver; they have three children, George (b. 12 July 2004) and twins Kaitlin Elizabeth and Samuel Robert (b. 28 September 2005). Lazenby and Shriver separated in 2008. Today, Lazenby enjoys sailing, motorcycle racing, car racing, reading, watching movies, playing golf, and playing tennis.
