Wall Street Journal profiles one-time 007 villain Michael Lonsdale

The Wall Street Journal’s arts section, in a story dated Dec. 3 but already online, has a profile of actor Michael Lonsdale, who played 007 nemesis Hugo Drax in Moonraker.

Here’s an excerpt:

At 79 years old, Mr. Lonsdale has played the gamut of religious roles —priests, abbots, cardinals, inquisitors—as well as countless aristocrats ranging from English lords to Louis XVI. Also a man of the theater, his circle of friends has included literary heavyweights like Marguerite Duras, Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, whose works he performed on stage in Paris in the 1960s. Perfectly bilingual, he moves easily between the bizarre shoe salesman in François Truffaut’s “Stolen Kisses” and the campy bearded villain in the James Bond classic, “Moonraker”

There’s a lot of detail about Lonsdale’s career and current projects. To read the story, JUST CLICK HERE.

And here’s a quick look back to the 1979 007 film where Lonsdale delivers a short speech to his minions on a space station while Bond (Roger Moore), Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) and Jaws (Richard Kiel) look on.