Rarely Seen Photos of Sir Roger Moore as a Child From the 1920s and 1930s

Sir Roger Moore’s childhood was marked by severe health struggles, the hardships of World War II, and a strong passion for the arts. Growing up as an only child in South London, his early years blended modest family security with the terrifying reality of the Blitz.

Born on October 14, 1927, in Stockwell, London, Moore was the only child of George Alfred Moore, a London Metropolitan Police officer, and Lillian “Lily” Pope, a homemaker. Because his father had a steady job during the Great Depression, the family enjoyed a level of modest financial security that many of their neighbors lacked. Moore often spoke warmly of his parents, noting that they fully supported his early endeavors.

Moore was a famously sickly child. He once joked that he had contracted “every childhood disease known to man,” battling severe illnesses that included double pneumonia, jaundice and mumps. Because he spent so much of his youth in and out of hospitals, his parents became highly protective of him. Lacking the physical strength to defend himself against neighborhood bullies, Moore developed a sharp, witty personality to defuse dangerous situations with humor, a trait that would later define his acting style.

His teenage years were heavily disrupted by World War II. During the Blitz, when Nazi forces heavily bombed London, Moore and his family took cover in an Anderson shelter built in their garden. He recalled the terrifying environment of serving as a wartime bomb spotter, once becoming so frightened by an oncoming V1 buzz bomb that he dropped his warning whistle. To escape the danger, he and his mother were eventually evacuated from London to Devon, leading him to attend multiple schools, including Battersea Grammar School and Launceston College.

Though he excelled academically and was a keen swimmer, Moore’s true childhood passion was art. Encouraged by his mother, he loved drawing and painting and initially aspired to be a professional artist. This passion led him to drop out of high school at age 15 to take an apprenticeship as a tracer and animator at a local animation house producing films for the war effort. However, his animation career was short-lived; he was fired after making a mistake with some animation cels, which inadvertently steered him toward extra work and his eventual legendary acting career.