Actor Sean Connery, the big screen’s first, and most revered James Bond, has died, his family said Saturday. He was 90 years old.

Connery died peacefully in his sleep in the Bahamas, having been “unwell for some time,” his son told the BBC.

Best known for his seven turns as Bond, beginning with 1962’s “Dr. No,” the Scottish-born Connery freed himself from agent 007’s debonair typecast to play myriad other roles across a decades-long career filled with accolades, including an Oscar, two BAFTA awards and being named People magazine’s “Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999.

Thomas Sean Connery was born of Irish ancestry in the slums of Edinburgh, Scotland, on Aug. 25, 1930. The son of a cleaning woman and a factory worker, Connery left school in his teens to work as an unskilled laborer. He was drafted into the Royal Navy at age 17, but he was discharged three years later due to a serious case of ulcers. He returned to Edinburgh and worked odd jobs, including as a lifeguard. He took up bodybuilding and placed third in the 1950 Mr. Universe competition.

A few years later, he moved to London and started acting, landing his first role in the chorus of a London production of “South Pacific.”

In 1956, he landed the role of a battered prizefighter in the BBC production of “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” earning him positive reviews and the attention of the wider industry. His first film was “No Road Back,” a B-movie crime yarn in 1956. He played opposite Lana Turner in “Another Time, Another Place,” and landed a several roles that stressed his looks, such as “Tarzan’s Great Adventure” in 1959.

His turn as Count Vronsky to Claire Bloom’s Anna Karenina on the BBC helped raise him to the top of a newspaper poll of readers asked to suggest the ideal James Bond.

He landed the role without a screen test, after an interview with producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, according to Variety. It was a controversial choice at the time, as Connery was an unknown outside Britain. But uttering “Bond, James Bond,” on the big screen made him an international star.

His stature grew with the popularity of the series, and he reprised the role in “From Russia With Love,” “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball,” over the next four years. He also donned the tuxedo for “You Only Live Twice” in 1967, and “Diamonds are Forever” in 1971, and returned to the role in “Never Say Never Again,” in 1983.

His star power cemented, Connery began to earn rich rewards for his roles. Though he was paid only $30,000 for “Dr. No,” by 1964, he received $400,000 for his role as a wealthy widower in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Marnie,” and was soon getting $750,000 a film. By the 1980s, his price tag was regularly over $5 million a role.

He broke away from Bond for myriad other films, from a soldier-turned adventurer in John Huston’s “The Man Who Would Be King,” in 1975 to a defecting Russian submarine captain in the 1990 Tom Clancy thriller, “The Hunt for Red October.” Other hits included “Murder on the Orient Express,” in 1974, “Highlander” in 1986 and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” in 1989.

Connery earned a best supporting actor Oscar as a tough Irish cop in Depression-era Chicago in Brian De Palma’s 1987 “The Untouchables.”

He last screen appearance was in 2003’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”

Connery was devoted to his native Scotland and used his stature to press for the re-establishment of a Scottish parliament. When the body reconvened in 1999, 296 years after its last meeting, Connery was invited to address the first session, where he was greeted with a thunderous ovation. His autobiography, “Being a Scot,” was published in 2008

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000, an honor he called “one of the proudest days of my life,” and asked that the investiture be performed at Holyrood Palace Edinburgh.

Other awards over his career, included the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999 and the American Film Institute’s lifetime achievement award in 2006, when he announced his retirement.

Connery was married to actress Diane Cilento from 1962-73. The couple divorced in 1973 and Cilento died in 2011. Connery is survived by his second wife, painter Micheline Roquebrune, whom he married in 1975; his son by Cilento, actor Jason Connery; and a grandson.