SIR Sean Connery, usually seen as the most macho of film stars, wrote a ballet, recited poetry and painted, according to a new autobiography by his ex-wife, Diane Cilento, the Australian actress.

In the book My Nine Lives, published this month, Cilento reveals how Connery, who began his career as a milkman in Edinburgh, felt stifled and typecast by his on-screen persona as James Bond.

She claims that he had enjoyed a particularly creative period during the mid-1960s, at the height of his Bond fame, writing a ballet called Black Lake which he had hoped to develop with a choreographer.

“(It was) very good, great even. He was very serious about it,” said Cilento, who now runs an experimental theatre in Queensland.

“He could hear it all in his head. It was like Swan Lake, but far more Macbethian and more classical ballet than modern.”

In the book she writes that although Connery discussed the work with George Balanchine, the world-famous choreographer at the New York City Ballet, who was said to be “impressed”, his proposal was never taken up.

Cilento married Connery in 1962 and they had a son, Jason. However, they divorced in 1973 amid accusations of violence, claims which Connery has strongly denied.

In 1965 Connery told Playboy: “I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong in hitting a woman, though I don’t recommend you do it in the same way you hit a man.”

In Vanity Fair magazine in 1993 he said: “Sometimes there are women who take it to the wire. That’s what they are looking for — the ultimate confrontation. They want a smack.”

Connery has said that his words were taken out of context and always denied Cilento’s claims that he hit her.

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