Roger Moore settled into acting by 1948, appearing in small roles on British television, radio, and repertory theater. In 1953 Moore went to Hollywood, where he secured an MGM contract, appearing in minor roles in four features over the next two years. He moved to Warner Brothers and appeared in several features, including The Sins of Rachel Cade. In 1958 Moore returned to England for a year to star in the television series, Ivanhoe, a coproduction between Screen Gems of America and Sydney Box. The series was part of a historical cycle in British television in the late 1950s, and the Ivanhoe series was an admirable effort in the genre. The series was loosely based on the chivalric exploits of Ivanhoe during the time of Prince John with the hero drawn from the novel by Sir Walter Scott. As the figure of the title, Moore was suitably dashing, an energetic defender of the weak and the poor and a nobleman to boot.

Back in Hollywood with Warners in 1959, Moore was given a starring role in the television series The Alaskans. Moore played Silky Harris, an adventurer, and already the suave sophistication that became a later trademark was in evidence. The series was a variation on the one-hour western series that Warners had been successfully churning out for several years, but The Alaskans lasted only one season.

Moore was then cast in the western series Maverick (1960). Cousin Beau, played by Moore, was sophisticated and upper class but, unfortunately, lacked the comic touch of the original star, James Garner, who had left the series. After one season on Maverick, Moore left the series, which folded a year later.

Moore returned to feature films. He made three more features for Warners, including a western, Gold for Seven Sinners (1961), a western vehicle for Clint Walker, the former star of Cheyenne, which was partly shot in Italy. Moore stayed two years in Italy, where he made two Italian films.

After nearly ten years in film and television, Moore was cast in the role of the Saint in the eponymous television series in 1961. The role perfectly fit his persona of a sophisticated Englishman with more than a modicum of intelligence, cunning, and toughness. While some appearances in earlier U.S. television anthology drama series, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, had Moore playing such a figure, nothing in his previous starring roles had capitalized on this side of Moore’s screen personality. The Saint expanded considerably on the type over seven years, through 114 filmed hours as well as two telefeatures. The series was produced in Britain by ITC/ATV and was based on the novels by Leslie Charteris. The Saint was a kind of modern Robin Hood who used wealth, cunning, and sophistication to help bring to justice criminals that the law had been unable to catch. The Saint taught Moore his trade and made him a large income. He became owner of a textile mill, a director of the Faberge perfume operation, and co-owner of a film production company, Barmoore, which produced later episodes of The Saint. The series also gave him a chance to try his hand at directing. All together, he directed eight hour-long episodes of The Saint and two hour-long episodes of his next television series, The Persuaders.

This latter series was a kind of spin-off to The Saint as far as Moore’s role was concerned. However, he no longer played solo, being teamed with fading screen idol Tony Curtis. The Persuaders was produced by a company of Sir Lew Grade and ran for 24 hour-long episodes in the 1971–72 season. The attempt to enlist audience loyalties on both sides of the Atlantic was obvious enough; nevertheless, the series had sufficient action and adventure, usually in exotic locales, to keep audiences happy and make the series popular. But it did little to advance Moore’s career after the achievement of The Saint. The real break came in 1973, when Moore was cast as the second James Bond. Chosen over actor Michael Caine, Moore’s casting as Bond was in line with the screen persona that had been elaborated over 15 years in television. Moreover, the work in television had given Moore a fame and popularity beyond anything Caine could muster from his film work in the previous ten years.

The Bond role meant that Moore was now an international star who no longer needed to play in television, but the general pattern of his career is a familiar and instructive one regarding the younger medium. Moore decided on an acting career just as television was displacing feature films as the most popular form of screen entertainment. Television taught him his trade as an actor, allowing him the opportunity over several series to elaborate a screen personality that would later stand him in good stead. After a long television apprenticeship, he finally graduated to big-budget feature films, where he has worked ever since. The other significant feature of his career is the paradox that this British star was in fact a product of the international television and film industries, if not the American industry.