How Connery missed out on Crown jewel

ONE of the coolest films of the 1960s was written for Sean Connery but starred Steve McQueen because of Connery’s indecision, a Hollywood writer has revealed.

It was a decision that the Scot would regret for many years.

The Thomas Crown Affair starred Steve McQueen as a wealthy playboy who organises bank robberies for kicks. It featured a sexy game of chess with investigator Faye Dunaway, and the Oscar-winning song the Windmills of Your Mind.

But the 1968 movie should have starred Sean Connery, hot on the heels of his success as James Bond, Alan Trustman revealed. “I wrote it for Sean Connery,” he said, in an interview with the New York Daily News. It could have been one of Connery’s greatest triumphs and he apparently regretted not playing the thief.

Trustman said: “Twenty-five years after The Thomas Crown Affair, Connery finally admitted to producer Walter Mirisch that he should have taken the role.

“Every day they would meet with Connery, and he would say, ‘I’ll think about it.’ After a week they went back to Los Angeles and cast McQueen.”