From Roger Moore with Love (12A) |Close-Up Film Review

This feature documentary on the much-loved, quintessentially English actor is engaging, fun and nicely high concept. 

How did a policeman’s son from a dodgy bit of South London go from such lowly origins via a stint as a knitwear catalogue model to becoming one of the most recognisable actors in the world? 

This film takes an intimate and personal approach, putting Moore’s friends and family and home movies at the heart of the portrait. It takes viewers on a journey through his world, featuring candid interviews with those who knew him best. Meanwhile, a first-person narrator gives an appropriately arch commentary on the unfolding story, with words taken from Moore’s own diaries and memoirs. 

The narrator function makes sense as Moore is shown to have created his own persona, both in life and onscreen, after his career got off to a bumpy start. Initial successes owed much to a gay British film producer and then his first two wives. 

The ’persona’ element is nicely done and actually quite touching. As Roger Moore was famous for being an actor without nuance, a man with a good looking but inexpressive face whose eyebrows did the acting, it makes sense to present this as a willed ‘mask’ of 60s English gentleman-ness. 

The Roger Moore persona then becomes the role Moore chose to play to become successful in life, career and love. And we aren’t talking about James Bond here: the persona was honed over the decade before Live and Let Die, when Moore played Simon Templar in The Saint. 

This makes sense of the lighthearted approach he takes to his acting career in several interviews here: the persona has made him rich and successful – why should he care if some critics dissed his acting chops? Especially as his greatest role was the persona itself and not the way he acted in any given film. 

I don’t see a lot of documentaries about actors – maybe the persona angle is commonplace. To me, here, it verged on the profound and added a powerful undertow to proceedings. 

Elsewhere, input from Moore’s three children spelled out the challenges of living in the shadow of famous parents with famous friends; and the film is upfront about how Moore stepping-stoned to fame using his good looks as well as his wives. 

As the credits role, you have a strong sense of a life well lived – how much more inspiring can the life of another person be?