From Bond baddie to shark hunter: Robert Shaw’s killer roles

With the re-release of ‘From Russia with Love’ this week, as part of the 60th-anniversary celebrations of 007, Geoffrey Macnab looks back at the varied screen career of Shaw, who is best known for playing the ruthless assassin in the Sean Connery film, as well as the shark-obsessed fisherman Quint in ‘Jaws’

Robert Shaw as Donald ‘Red’ Grant and Sean Connery as James Bond in ‘From Russia with Love’ in 1963 (Granger/Shutterstock)

Don’t mess with Donald “Red” Grant – played by Robert Shaw. That’s the message at the start of the second Sean Connery Bond film From Russia with Love, which is being re-released in cinemas this week, as part of the 60th-anniversary celebrations of James Bond on screen. Connery’s 007 looks utterly terrified by the hulking, blond-haired killer, dressed all in black. They’re stalking each other in the dead of night in the gardens of a country house. Shaw unwinds a garrotting wire conveniently kept inside his watch, creeps behind the British spy, and chokes him to death. The entire procedure takes less than two minutes.

Only when a colleague puts his fingers under the dead man’s chin and peels back a mask do we realise that this isn’t the real Bond, just a fake. The point, though, is made forcefully enough. Shaw’s Grant is a ruthless, cold-blooded assassin. He is nothing like those other Bond villains with their gadgets, pet cats, and steel-rimmed hats.

Later in the movie, in a famous scene aboard a train, Grant pretends to be a British spy. Bond is almost taken in until the imposter orders Chianti with his grilled sole. Red wine with fish! By the expression on his face, it’s clear that Bond is deeply shocked. No self-respecting English gentleman (or spy) would commit such an offence against culinary good taste.