Connery's career ended by 'idiot' film barons

The veteran actor said: "I'm fed up with the idiots - the ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and the people who green-light the movies."

He admitted he would not rule out another starring role - but said it would have to be "a mafia-style offer" to get him in front of a camera again.

The announcement, in an interview in New Zealand, appears to end speculation over the screen future of Sir Sean, 74. Late last year, he denied reports that he had retired, and in February his publicist insisted he had only taken some time off to work on his autobiography - a project since shelved.

Sir Sean also revealed he turned down the role of Gandalf in the New Zealand director Peter Jackson's multi-Oscar winning Lord of the Rings trilogy - because he didn't understand the plot.

He said: "I never understood it. I read the book, I read the script. I saw the movie. I still don't understand it."

But he added he respected Jackson's talents as a film-maker "who obviously understands the nuts and bolts" and the massive near-two-year effort of making three blockbusters simultaneously.

Sir Sean said: "I don't say they're all idiots, I am just saying there's a lot of them that are very good at being idiots."

He added: "I would be interested in doing something that I didn't fully understand, but not for 18 months."

He also revealed that his decision to pull out of the six-figure autobiography deal had cost him "a stonking amount of money".

The book would have covered his rise from a tenement in Edinburgh's Fountainbridge, service as a Royal Navy rating and careers as a coffin polisher, bodybuilder and art-school model to the role of James Bond, superstardom and a luxury home in the Bahamas.

The actor, who always swore he would never pen his memoirs, initially struck a deal with friend and fellow Scot Meg Henderson to write the book, but the plan fell through.

The biographer, Hunter Davies, who ghost-wrote former Rangers star Paul Gascoigne's warts-and-all biography, was brought in. But Sir Sean said he backed off because Davies wanted to dig too deep into his life, including claims he hit his first wife, actress Diane Cilento, a claim Connery has always denied.

He added that there had been ten unauthorised books written about him and Davies had "started to run with the ball with all this stuff".

Sir Sean said: "I realised I was going to be spending the rest of my life trying to correct these inaccuracies, and I can't be bothered."

He also doesn't need the money - he became the first $1million actor with the Bond movie Diamonds are Forever and netted 10million for his last film, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.