One word of warning: the potential for spoilers exists within the piece…like, to the point where Firth asks during one of his answers “not to turn this into spoilers when you write about it.” But, look, if you don’t want to know, then don’t read it. But given that the original novel was published in 1974, followed by the TV miniseries in 1979, it’s not as if you haven’t had plenty of time to absorb this information already…

Journalist: Are you a fan of the espionage and spy films?

Colin Firth: I like the good ones, yeah.

J: Do you have any favorites?

CF: No, not really. [Gesturing toward the journalist sitting next to him.] We talked about this, actually, him and I. He had to help me out. [Laughs.] No, I’m one of those people where, if you say, “Tell me what your favorite music is,” I can’t think of any music in the world. So that’s a difficult question. You throw something at me, I’ll tell you whether I like it or not. But, yeah, I’m a fan.

J: Well, we’re all like that. You ask me, and I’d do the same thing.

CF: Yeah, I know. Nothing is more guaranteed to draw a blank, I’m afraid.

J: In the film, we were trying to figure out exactly who the people up in that big office were.

CF: [Uncertainly] Oh, I hope I can help…

J: What does Bill Haydon (Firth’s character) do?

CF: He…right, okay, I’m going to get stuck here, so don’t trust me too hard on this. [Laughs.] He runs London Station, which means that, basically, he’s in charge of operations in the home base. From the home base. And I…don’t quite know how that configures, because MI-6, as I understand it, technically does not exist. Nobody acknowledges it. It’s so secret that there’s no such thing. And then MI-5, I guess they call it Military Intelligence Five, but Six, because it’s to do with foreign operations, and there aren’t supposed to be any… [Clears throat.] So that’s the zone that they’re in. So he’s one of the very, very senior guys, and very much a candidate to take over the whole thing.

J: Those are all senior guys up there, right?

CF: Yeah, those are the five guys.

J: How would you describe your character without giving anything away?

CF: Can’t. [Laughs.]

J: I loved that you didn’t telegraph it at all, but…how do you carry the knowledge (about your character) throughout your performance without giving it away?

CF: Well, it’s a tricky one in a way. I mean, some people would say that they did know. I mean, it’s obviously not a state secret, because the book’s been there for 40 years, and there was a TV series. So we’re not entirely dependent on not knowing. Because the story, in the end, is about much more than that. The thing is, everybody who is featured has some sort of alternate life, another agenda, whether it’s some sort of broken relationship or some guilt or disappointment. They’re all wearing a mask for one reason or another. And I think the beauty of the film is that we get that revealed in little hints. I think in a way it’s much more a personal, emotional story about the kind of things that people hope for and are disappointed in, and about loneliness and the failure to find trust or intimacy, than it is about who did it. Smiley has an attractive wife who will betray him constantly, and he will constantly forgive her and constantly take her back. And I think he feels that way about…his institution and about his country. You know? He has this endless faith in what the value system should be, and the romance that he bestows on it…he will stay committed to that no matter how often he is disappointed. And I think that is accurate in his marriage.

J: Haydon had (a relationship with) a boy and a girl in the film, so…

CF: [Laughs.] Haydon doesn’t care too much. He cares enough to tie the ends up. You can argue that Haydon’s the most mysterious character in a way. The motif of the Russian doll…what do you call those, when it’s a doll within a doll within a doll?

J: Nesting dolls.

CF: That was actually used in the TV series as the logo, in the opening credits. And that’s drawn from a passage in the book, where Smiley, having just interviewed Haydon at the end, he speculates…he spends about three pages trying to guess what Haydon’s motives are and what he’s really made of. And he compares him to one of those dolls. You get an interpretation, you look inside, and there seems to be another one, and then there seems to be another inside that. Is he motivated by genuine altruistic political ideology, or is he just a narcissistic sociopath? Is it all about him? He thinks he’s Lawrence of Arabia. He wants to drag the ignorant and afflicted out of the darkness and lead them into the light and into prosperity. But he also just wants it to be about him. He’s the guy leading on the light charge, you know? So you can ponder that forever. I’m trying to answer your question, but…he’s affectatious. He wants to convince us that he’s a bohemian of some sort. He’s powerful and bright, forceful and charismatic enough to break some rules. He’s not a swaggering non-conformist, but just enough to…it’s little grace notes. This is why when I read it…it’s not described in terms of what he wears and everything, but I just said, “Well, he paints, let’s put him in the tweeds so he’s not as city-business-y as the others. And let’s give him red socks. And a flowery pocket handkerchief or something.” Just to say a little flamboyance and a twist.

J: But in a way, by betraying others, he stays true to himself.

CF: If you believe his ideology is as sincere as he says it is, yes. This is precisely what he says – and, actually, it’s a line I have to say because the script was, brilliantly so, pared right down. But the first draft of the script didn’t have the line about having to choose a side, and we didn’t ever really find out what Haydon’s motives were. And I said, “Well, listen, I don’t want to make it about Haydon and what he did and why, but I do think it adds complexity to the universe of that film.” Because that’s not an uncommon point of view. Certainly of that generation, during the period of Communism, where it wasn’t…loyalty to an ideology or a cause took precedent very comfortably for a lot of people. Loyalty to your nationality, what your government tells you to do. And if you profoundly disapproved of your government or your country, then I think some people did feel a loyalty to ally themselves with one that they approved of. And he says that. “Yeah, I had to pick a side, and the west had become so ugly.” And in the book, he goes into greater and greater detail about that. He deconstructs it. And he certainly wouldn’t have been the only one.

Burgess, Mclean, Philby, Blunt…they’re not famous names to anyone who’s not British, but these were spies of that generation who…again, I can trust all of you not to turn this into spoilers when you write about it, because when applied to Haydon, it gives too much away. But these men shared secrets with Soviets for reasons which were not to do with self-advancement or finance. They just did it. And they were all like Haydon: educated in the elite system, I think most of them went to Eaton, or if not, Oxbridge. There was an above average number of gay guys among them. They were considerably about average intelligence. And privileged. And you have to ask, “Why?” Why would privileged people, who are taking all the benefits of the decadent Western capitalist society, throw it all away for giving secrets to a system which is to do with egalitarianism and is anti-capital and anti-wealth?

A very interesting piece of symmetry, just from my own personal point of view: the first play and film I ever did was called “Another Country,” which was entirely based on Guy Burgess’s formative years, asking, “Why would someone from a privileged school like that become a spy?” And it was, in the theoretical world of this writer, it was connected to his homosexuality and to the era in which he grew up. The 1930s, during which communism could be far more comfortably idealized. We didn’t know about Stalin’s purges. The Spanish Civil War was raging, people were flocking to fight the angels or the devils, however they saw them. And the fact that the Burgess character, if you like, who’s called Guy Bennett, the fact that he’s gay means that he feels that he has to hide a lot. And he feels that he has to use subterfuge to conduct his personal life. And, therefore, the school becomes a sort of training ground to become a spy. And it also becomes the place where you most learn to want to screw the system. So that story ends the character saying, “You know what? To hell with them all. I will take their privileges, but I’ll be undermining them and I’ll be screwing them at the same time.”

J: Could your character exist now?

CF: I can’t imagine it. Not in those configurations. I can’t imagine somebody…I think those figures, the components aren’t the same. That generation of pre-WWII, pre-Soviets elite English schoolboys who were weaned while the British Empire was still very much alive as an idea. And so was Communism. And those things made very convenient polarities in people’s political minds. Now, those polarities have disappeared, so those components are gone. So it’s very hard to see how anybody…how exactly the same kinds of people would do those same kinds of things for the same reasons.  I think it’s pretty unlikely.

J: There’s also the idea of someone from a privileged background who’d like to share his wealth.

CF: Now, I think that is possible. Absolutely. I was listening to a guy on TV…he didn’t come from a privileged background. He came from a poor background, but he became a successful lawyer, and he gave it all up for politicking. This guy was on C-SPAN this morning, he was talking about Occupy, and he’s part of it. He just said, “No, I’ve thrown that away, because I think it’s far more important to think about how we should live our lives, that they aren’t just to do with personal gain and personal achievement.” And he’s a highly educated guy who had the capacity to…who I think did earn a lot of money, but he decided to go a different way. So I think there are variations on it, just in terms of people giving things up. Having said that, I’m not going to idealize the likes of, for instance, Kim Philby, on whom I think Haydon is largely based or at least inspired by. And I know that le Carré would not want that man idealized. le Carré was an active intelligence officer at the time they killed Philby. He was active, and…I know this from interviews that le Carré’s done – it’s not anything I’ve been privy to, that I’ve heard personally [Laughs.] – but, yeah, you know, he’s just a very harsh judge of Philby. He’s very clear on the fact that Philby’s treachery cost lives. And I think we’d probably question the purity of his ideals as well. So it’s complex. And I wouldn’t say that Burgess, Mclean, Philby, or Blunt were motivated by exactly the same things. Burgess seemed to be to be a more feckless creature than Mclean, who I think was more serious politically. They just happened to have come up through the ranks together.

J: How familiar with the book were you?

CF: Not at all.

J: Have you read it since?

CF: Oh, now I have, yes. Several times.

J: But not back then?

CF: No.

J: And the TV series?

CF: I don’t know whether I saw it. It’s one of those things that’s so present in one’s life that you know it whether you’ve ever seen it or not. I mean, I probably saw some episodes, and it was…whatever you were watching on TV at the time was so constantly being traded that you were being aware of it all the time. And then people talked about it all the time. So it had a huge presence and a huge impact. You know, I remember at one point not being able to remember if I’d ever actually read “Great Expectations.” [Laughs.] Or if I’d only ever seen films and TV adaptations and had it read to me at school in class. Had I ever actually at any point sat down and read it? But I could probably take you through that story in great detail…and I don’t think I read it! And le Carré’s a bit like one of these cultural reference points. When the Berlin Wall came down, I think most people were less concerned about what would happen to the political geography of Europe than they were about what would happen to John le Carré. [Laughs.] Actually, I think some of his best work is post-Cold-War stuff.

J: Having read the book finally, are you impressed that it was pared down to just over two hours?

CF: Absolutely. Well, yeah, I think what the film has done – and I think this is why he has endorsed it so heartily – is, instead of trying to capture every prosaic detail of the whodunit and all the strands, it basically focuses in on what the experience would be like, to have put your trust in an institution like that and to be in that world, where it’s all you’ve got. Because you can’t put trust in your personal life if you’re a spy. You can’t share that. You know, I think that I do know…I’ve heard that there was a response from a group of spies who saw this film, and there’s a line that Tom Hardy has, where he says, “I’ll do this one condition: I’m out. I want a family. I don’t want to end up like you lot.” And apparently it got a big laugh…of painful recognition. [Laughs.] And I think it’s as much about that as anything else. It’s about loneliness – male, mostly – and isolation, and I think it’s to do with what that feels like, rather than chasing down all the storylines.

One word of warning: the potential for spoilers exists within the piece. But, look, given that the original novel was published in 1974, followed by the TV miniseries in 1979, it’s not as if you haven’t had plenty of time to absorb this information already…

Journalist: How liberating was it for you to be told (by John le Carré), “Don’t reshoot the book?”

Peter Straughan: Very. [Laughs.]

Tomas Alfredson: Yes, very. I was much more so, I think. Peter wasn’t too worried, but I was very reverential about the book and was very nervous about taking a foot off the path. So it was just very good that John le Carré was there to push us off the path and tell us to do something different.

J: Can you each tell us about your first encounter with the book, if you had read it a long time ago? Did either of you?

PS: I’d read it, yeah. And Bridget had read it years earlier and loved it. In the UK, it’s considered one of the greatest novels of the 20^th century, let alone spy novels. And then we read it again when we were asked to come in to discuss adapting it. Which made us quite nervous. [Laughs.] You read it, and…it’s quite a difficult book to adapt!

J: Because it’s so well known, or because of the complexity…?

PS: Because of the complexity. Because it’s quite an interior story. So much of it takes place in Smiley’s mind and Smiley’s memory. And also because, in the UK, it’s a holy cow. As is the TV series. So there was a sense of…I think we were maybe the only writers who rushed in and said, “Okay, we’ll do it!” Everyone else would say, “No, we don’t want to do it!” [Laughs.] Fools rushing in where angels fear to tread.

TA: I think it’s…very much about not deciding, “Okay, I want to do this,” but it’s about, “I want to start working on this, to start the process.” And early on, it was…I remembered the old TV series and the reading of the book, but also meeting with the actual persons, with Peter and Bridget and le Carré and the producers, who are very nice people. To do a scary thing like this, you need to be encouraged, and if you’re surrounded by encouraging people who you trust, it’s much easier.

J: The press does mention that you actually made the phone call. “I want to make this movie.” Is that true?

TA: Well, it was…one of my managers had heard that Working Title had retrieved the rights to the book. And then I had been looking quite awhile for my next project after “Let the Right One In,” and for some reason I couldn’t come to a decision. And then I heard about this, and it just felt, “Yes! The timing is right!” It just felt like the right thing to do. And I think…then they set up a meeting for us, and then it just started. I think it was the vulnerability and loneliness of the soldiers of the Cold War that was sort of my first thing that made me want to do this. How they work and what soldiers were needed in that war in comparison to a hot war, which is very different.

J: I think in the book one of the characters – I don’t remember which one – says that the secret service would reflect the subconscious of a country. Do you think that it was true then, and is it true now?

PS: Yes, I think there’s some truth in that. I think that was a valid idea, that the disguise that a person chooses sometimes reveals exactly who we are, in fact.

TA: Yeah.

J: Also, during that time, they were all living with a sense of doom because of the Cold War, and now we’re living with another sense of doom…a different one, but one with economic uncertainty. I wondered if that was something you had in mind when you tried to not adapt the book.

TA: Not me.

PS: Not me.

J: Because we kind of identify with the pessimism of the characters and this kind of betrayal.

TA: I think that films and literature, they work differently in different times, depending on in what era it’s made, and also in what context you’re looking at the film. I don’t think that you…it’s very dangerous to be a philosopher on film. The philosophy, I think, is something that happens in you when you look at it, when you sort of put the pieces together. For me, this film is much more about human values and betrayal of friendship and loyalty rather than a documentary about the Cold War. Maybe it wouldn’t have been possible to do this film this way back then. Maybe people would have thought it would be too emotional, or they wouldn’t understand it if it was made in ’73. People might would’ve wanted something more true to reality.

PS: I agree. I think it probably would be dangerous…I think it’s always probably dangerous to try and draw out contemporary relevance from a project. I think it becomes then too self-conscious, and you’re going to trip up over that. I think you owe it to yourself to respond emotionally to the piece itself and don’t worry about anything else. They’re always reflecting the times they’re made in, anyway. In hindsight, you can always see it. But I think you can’t see it when you’re doing it, and you shouldn’t be trying to see it when you’re doing it.

J: What is it about George Smiley in particular that’s made him such an enduring creation for le Carré fans? Just as a main character, he’s very reactive, very restrained, he’s not as dynamic as some supporting characters. What’s his attraction?

PS: I mean, he’s described as a person you would immediately forget. Anyone’s uncle. Like a piece of the wallpaper. And that is his great talent: that he makes people talk. [Turns to Tomas.] That sounded like a commercial, didn’t it? “He makes people talk.” [Laughs.] But that’s his great talent, and he doesn’t send any signals at all. And as we learn during the film, he is carrying a big cross, this man, and must be extremely lonely. But he never complains. He’s never whining. And he is the most loyal person you could ever imagine. He is beyond every limit that I could imagine doing myself. And I think that is sympathetic. He is a sympathetic character.

TA: I think there’s a kind of method at work which always works with an audience. That’s the kind of Clark Kent mechanism, where he’s sort of looked over, but we realize that he isn’t Clark Kent but, rather, he’s wearing blue tights under his suit. [Laughs.]

J: We so often see Gary Oldman in very different roles than this. Why Gary Oldman? How did his name even originally come up?

TA: It was quite hard, to be honest, to find the right name. We didn’t get the right idea for a very long time. I think over six months we discussed different names, because we needed some kind of a chameleon. And if you look at Gary’s work, what he’s done is very different personalities. He’s almost never type-casted. And I thought he would be ideal for the part when that came up. We almost gave up. And I said, “I don’t want to do anything casting before we have George.” So I flew over to Los Angeles to meet him, and…I didn’t have a list. I just had one name on the list, and it was him. And we connected very well, and I’m very happy he did it. He’s the kind of an actor…he’s so experienced that he dared not to do too much. You have to have done so many portraits, as he has done before, to dare to be this quiet and silent.

J: How was working with Alberto Iglesias? And who came up with the idea of the Julio Iglesias song at the end, the version of “La Mer”?

TA: The two Iglesiases… [Laughs.] People often ask Alberto if they’re related, and he said, “Yes,” but, of course, they’re not. Alberto is…I have been a big fan of his for 20 years or something. I think he’s one of the greatest contemporary composers there is, so it was indeed a dream come true when he said “yes” to do the score, and it turned out to be the perfect choice. The way he…I don’t know if you thought of that, but the way he finds the cues is exceptional. I haven’t heard that before, the way he’s not using the very obvious points in the film, where the music starts or stops. So he has a very unique way of cueing the music. And the story about Julio Iglesias was that we wanted to give a little glimpse of George’s personality when he’s by himself, so I wanted to see him listening to his favorite record. [Laughs.] And we were, like, “What kind of music would George listen to? We can’t have him listen to opera, that’s too easy.” So I thought, “Why not Julio Iglesias?” Because he’s everything this world is not. He’s the dream of the sun, the Mediterranean, the easy life. And we did the scene, but…it was too strange. [Laughs.] It was a little too much. But when I was listening to music to find the right song, for that scene, I found this very rare live recording of him singing “La Mer,” and we used it for the very end sequence instead, which was great.

PS: But that happened very early on. Tomas was already thinking of pieces of music very early on.

J: Lastly, where was John le Carré in the film?

TA: He’s in the second Christmas party sequence, where we see the Lenin Santa. When they start singing the Soviet national anthem, he’s in the front, singing. [Laughs.]

P.S. Don’t forget to check out our roundtable interview with Colin Firth!

Spy /spī/ noun: A person who secretly collects and reports information about an enemy or competitor.

Artists, in my experience, have very little centre. They fake. They are not the real thing. They are spies. I am no exception. – John le Carré, aka David Cornwell

If you should learn one thing from watching the Oscar-touted new film version of John le Carré’s classic of realistic Cold War-era cloak and dagger, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” it’s that people in the espionage business should not be show-offs. If everyone knows you’re a spy, you’re not doing it right.

Nevertheless, documents get released over time, old stories get told, and the end result is that we now know of a surprisingly large number of world-renowned writers, actor, and others who have worked pretty high up, and sometimes rather low down, in the field of intelligence. On the other hand, whether or not some of them were actual spies is a matter of how you define spying. That’s why we like the rather inclusive definition we’ve placed up top. On his website, John le Carré, who worked for several years at England’s MI-6 and whose real name is David Cornwell, at first tells us he was not a spy at all, but then jauntily describes himself as a “spook” four paragraphs later. By any name, spies are cagey.

While a lot of these people were probably mainly bureaucrats, we’d add that the same thing could be said for le Carré’s most famed protagonist. Whether portrayed by Alec Guinness in the 1979 television adaptation or newly embodied for the big screen by Gary Oldman, the seemingly gentle and harmless George Smiley is a man one underestimates at one’s extreme peril.

In any case, some of the notables below were pretty deep in the trenches of the spy game, and some probably even killed people. Some may not really have been involved with intelligence at all, we can’t be sure. That’s one thing about dealing with espionage – it’s like it’s all supposed to be a big secret or something.

MI-6 operative David Cornwell began writing novels under a mandatory pen name partly because he hated — hated, we tell you — James Bond. To young Cornwell, Bond was a “fascist” who might as easily have joined the Soviet SMERSH if only “the girls had been so pretty and the martinis so dry.” His 1963 novel, “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” was a gripping, bitter tragedy and an instant classic, but becoming a famed author and an implicit critic of MI-6 wasn’t the stated reason le Carré/Cornwell finally quit. His espionage career had apparently already been ended by Kim Philby, the Soviet mole whose betrayal inspired “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” As to the rest of Cornwell’s story? To the extent the English gossip press will allow, the ex-spook has had a penchant for secrecy — at least until such time as his authorized biography will be released in 2014. Here’s some of what we’ve gathered in the meantime: Still a sometimes outspoken member of the English left at age 80, Cornwell was first hired to spy on the English far left. He soon graduated to join the spying establishment he later memorialized in his books as “the Circus.” Readers of le Carré’s “A Perfect Spy” will know of his shady father, who in real life mixed with such notorious British gangsters as the Krays. For now, the 1986 novel about a suspected double-agent is still probably your best source for clues about the real career of David Cornwell.

Commander Ian Fleming was no James Bond, but he could have persuaded you he was. A distant but often charming snob with a depressive side and a fervid imagination, 007′s creator was Codename 17F of British Naval Intelligence. Nicholas Rankin’s recent book, “Ian Fleming’s Commandos” describes how a cadre of soldiers under the future author’s command was tasked with pilfering German secrets, essentially spying on a mass level. That was next to nothing in the scheme of things, however. One early project involved Fleming and William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the legendary founder of the OSS, the World War II-era ancestor of the CIA, in the mass reading and censorship of English and American mail. Some of Fleming’s proposed wartime intrigues have more than a hint of 007 about them, though the more imaginative scenarios had a way of not actually being used. One scheme involved a German plane stocked with English soldiers posing as Germans as a ruse to acquire the famed Enigma device. He also conceived of a plan to enlist Aleister Crowley, the notorious occultist and self-proclaimed antichrist, in a plot to ensnare ensnare occult obsessed Nazi Party official Rudolf Hess, who inconveniently went and got himself captured. Another plan involved monitoring the forces of Spain in Gibraltar, but then fascist dictator Francisco Franco chose to sit out the war. The plan’s name may sound familiar: “Operation Goldeneye.”

Ian Fleming isn’t the only pop culture legend to have his World War II cloak and dagger activities exposed in a 2011 book. Jennet Conant’s “A Covert Affair” purports to be about the espionage and romantic activities of a certain future TV cooking institution named Julia McWilliams and her eventual husband, Paul Child. By all accounts, however, Conant’s book isn’t quite the tale of thefts of secret documents between kisses and boeuf à la bourguignonne that we might hope for, nor is it some dark tale of violent counter-insurgency. (Imagine a machine gun wielding Julia Child: “Bon appetit, motherfuckers!”) Indeed, the book has been derided by critics for really being more about the adventures of the couple’s friends and associates at the OSS. Among those friends was one Jane Foster, who was indicted as a double agent in 1957 and very briefly got Julia and Paul into unsavory McCarthy-era hot water, but the intrigue ended there. Whatever McWilliams and Child actually did for the OSS was, we imagine, like most spy work in that it was far too dull for anyone to write about. Later, the Childs were assigned to China and some of their labor no doubt involved cables from Mao’s communist forces and Chang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang. That might have been fairly interesting, but the only thing that seems to have got Paul and Julia excited, aside from each other, was the wonders of the local cuisine.

Yes, the German expatriate mega-star and pioneer in the field of sexual liberation was surely an inspiration for the “Inglourious Basterds” character of Bridget von Hammersmarck played by Diane Kruger. And, yes, the great star of cinema and cabaret really did volunteer for the top secret OSS. Even so, it’s stretching things to imply that the woman who aroused a generation in “The Blue Angel” and “Destry Rides Again” was any kind of secret agent. Unlike von Hammersmarck, Dietrich’s profound revulsion with the Nazis was well known and only moderated by the fact that she still had a mother and sister living in Germany; she would not have been much use as an undercover operative. On the other hand, Miss Dietrich really was very much a heroic fighter against fascism in World War II, allowing her German language recordings of American pop tunes to be covertly distributed in Hitler’s Europe, and she entirely deserved her Medal of Freedom. Even so, we’re mainly including her because this list could really use a little sexing up.

It’s easy to forget just how huge a star the slender English thespian was on both sides of the Atlantic. Leslie Howard used his immense power to give his Broadway costar, Humphrey Bogart, his big movie break in “The Petrified Forest.” And when David O. Selznick needed an actor who could romantically overpower ultimate A-lister Clark Gable for the affections of vivacious Vivien Leigh during the early portions of “Gone with the Wind,” Howard was the natural choice. Howard also had played a number of heroic and spy-like roles, so it’s easy to imagine him doing something dangerously top secret. That may be why speculation still persists about the mysterious 1943 plane crash that killed him. No one knows exactly why BOAC 777 from Lisbon was shot down by eight German fighters. One theory goes that Germany believed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was aboard. Or, perhaps, the Germans were trying to prevent a secret meeting that had already happened. Writer José Rey-Ximena asserted in a 2008 book that, through a former girlfriend, Howard had arranged a covert get together with Spain’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco, a natural ally to Mussolini and Hitler, and persuaded him to remain neutral in the war. If this is what happened, Howard may very well have shaved years off World War II, but also extended the reign of Spanish fascism for decades and ruined poor Ian Fleming’s Operation Goldeneye. Spying really is a messy business.

The man behind such movie classics as “Stagecoach,” “The Searchers” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” and very arguably the greatest of all American directors, the irascible but occasionally beloved John Ford was a Naval Reserve officer. Ford was busy on several fronts during the war, including making several documentaries and shooting secret footage for the OSS; he was wounded while filming the Battle of Midway and eventually cited for bravery. However, according to biographer Joseph McBride, the director took an active interest in spying for his Navy pals much earlier, including a now famous, seemingly casual 1939 Mexican fishing trip. Accurately or not, Ford was convinced he found evidence of a significant Japanese presence in the coastal areas of Baja as he and cinematographer George Schneiderman filmed and took stills. Meanwhile, buddies like John Wayne and Ward Bond were happily spending the trip fishing and drinking, but not necessarily in that order, and Ford undoubtedly took part in those festivities as well. Nevertheless, Naval Intelligence was impressed with the director’s report, and by the end of the war, Ford was an important advisor to William Donovan.

Who knew that the creator of Willy Wonka, “James and the Giant Peach,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” and the famous episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” involving murder with a frozen leg of lamb was also “one of the biggest cocksmen in America”? It might seem odder still if you know of author Roald Dahl’s problematic marriage to actress Patricia Neal and his generally unpleasant reputation in middle age. However, the surprisingly handsome young Dahl was a genuine war hero in the Royal Air Force and apparently blessed with immense savoir faire and a knack for bedding wealthy women traveling in key political circles. So it was that Canadian spy William Stephenson, who was working with English intelligence to lure the U.S. into the ongoing world war before Pearl Harbor, noted that Dahl had an amazing ability to gain entry to the corridors of power, as it were. Among Dahl’s lambs to the slaughter was one Clare Boothe Luce, a conservative Republican writer and politician opposed to FDR’s strongly anti-Nazi foreign policy who also happened to be married to Henry Luce, the powerful publisher of Time and Life magazines. We can’t claim any direct connection and we’re sure patriotism and Pearl Harbor played a huge part, but her support of FDR’s war effort became pretty strong when she was elected to Congress in 1942. We’re not sure if any of this background informed Roald Dahl’s amusing work on the screenplay for the fifth James Bond adventure, “You Only Live Twice,” but it couldn’t have hurt.

You’ve very likely never heard of cool and collected playwright-spy John Ashenden. Audiences disregarded 1936′s “Secret Agent,” an underrated Alfred Hitchcock-directed film version of the agent’s exploits, and there’s been only one BBC television adaptation since. Nevertheless, the Ashenden stories were big enough to launch the modern spy genre, and they were apparently all based on the personal experiences of Somerset Maugham, quite likely one of your English teacher’s favorite writers. With a medical degree in his background and a very dramatic love life involving both men and women, Maugham finished his 1915 novel, “Of Human Bondage,” while working as an ambulance driver alongside fellow World War I literati including Ernest Hemingway and e.e. cummings. The very busy Mr. Maugham was then recruited to travel to Switzerland to aide in efforts against a leftist pre-Gandhi Indian independence movement that espoused violence against the British imperialists. In return, the King’s government tried to kill many of the movement’s leaders in Europe, and Maugham was involved to some extent. Maugham was later asked to undertake a secret mission to Moscow to keep Russia in the war and Nicolai Lenin’s Bolsheviks out of power. No luck there, but after writing up the experiences with his usual flair for melodrama, Maugham racked up one more career success. Still, a spy’s lot is rarely a happy one. Winston Churchill had been deeply involved in the attempted Russian intervention. He used England’s severe Official Secrets Act to persuade Maugham to burn 14 of the 30 Ashenden stories.

If any actor ever earned his onscreen macho cred honestly, it was the magnetic, eccentric star of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing” and “Dr. Strangelove,” not to mention such outstanding classic-era productions as “The Asphalt Jungle” and “Johnny Guitar.” You probably also remember Sterling Hayden as the bad cop whose good Italian meal comes to a downright nasty end in “The Godfather.” Ironically, early in his career, the future tough guy’s tough guy was sold as something of a pretty boy and had even pleased the gossip hounds by marrying his first co-star, Madeleine Carroll — the female lead of Alfred Hitchcock’s early spy entries, “The 39 Steps” and the aforementioned “Secret Agent.” After Pearl Harbor, however, all bets were off. Hayden, an experienced seaman, found himself using an assumed name and shipping supplies to leftist anti-Nazi partisans in Yugoslavia on behalf of William Donovan’s OSS. At one point, Wikipedia tells us, the strapping actor parachuted himself into Nazi-controlled Croatia and did…well, something very heroic, we’re sure. Hayden was, for his part, so impressed by the bravery of the partisans that some of their socialism rubbed off. For his troubles, the future General Jack Ripper received medals, a commendation from Yugoslavian strongman Marshall Tito and a 1951 summons from the hated House Un-American Activities Committee. That part of the story, Sterling Hayden would surely agree, was less heroic.

A passionate leftist, devout Catholic, and world class writer plagued with bipolar disorder, Graham Greene was probably the chief literary inspiration for the young John le Carré, Much of his most popular work was in the espionage genre and, even if you’re not sure who Greene is, if you watch a lot of movies, you may be familiar with “The Quiet American,” “The Human Factor,” “Our Man in Havana,” “This Gun for Hire” and “The Third Man.” He also famously worked for MI-6 during the Cold War despite political sympathies that have often been described as radical. Regardless, his books brilliantly explored the moral tensions that too often put the West on the side of the oppressors in places like Vietnam, Cuba and Africa. As to exactly what Greene did for MI-6, perhaps the reason we don’t know is that he worked underneath, and was good friends with, none other than MI-6 mole Kim Philby. Lest readers form any dark suspicions about Greene being a turncoat himself, it seems clear that he was probably ignorant of Philby’s duplicity. In any case, he remained free to bash U.S. and English foreign policy in very strong terms. If there were anything to prosecute him over, an excuse might have been found.

We considered leaving out this swing-era trumpeter turned CIA spook since he is far better known as a spy than for his youthful sojourn with the Harry James and Glen Miller orchestras. However, as the father of drummer-composer Stewart Copeland of the Police and Miles Copeland III, Sting’s manager and the founder of now defunct I.R.S. records, Miles Copeland, Jr.’s connection to show business and his involvement in some of the nastiest chapters in Cold War history surely rates a mention. Joining the OSS after Pearl Harbor, Copeland eventually became one of the CIA’s main Middle East specialists and seems to have been neck deep in a number of ill-conceived and immoral undertakings. By far the lousiest and most aggressively stupid of these was “Operation Ajax,” a 1953 CIA/MI6-sponsored coup which overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed the brutal regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi. The Shah, of course, was in turn overthrown in the 1970s by radical Islamists who remain in power to this day. It appears that Copeland might also have been involved with operations protecting and giving arms to neighboring Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, as well as the notorious MK-Ultra program, which explored the use of LSD and other drugs as possible chemical warfare agents. Copeland, who died in 1991, later retired to write. His first book was entitled “The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics.”

Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but not many Jews have become famous playing baseball. Moreover, the clubby World War II OSS didn’t exactly make it easy for “ethnic types” to make their mark in the spy game. Boston Red Sox catcher Moe Berg did both. As described in the 1995 bestseller, “The Catcher Was a Spy,” Berg was a highly eccentric radio quiz show winner, amateur film cameraman, and Asiaphile who was recruited by the Office of Inter-American Affairs to shoot 16mm footage used in planning the post-Pearl Harbor “Doolittle Raid.” He later joined the OSS Balkans desk and, this might sound familiar, at one point parachuted into Yugoslavia to aid partisans. After that, Berg’s raw brain power led him to scientific espionage. At one point, he was sent to Switzerland to attend a lecture by quantum mechanics pioneer Werner Heisenberg. If the physicist had said anything to make Berg believe the Germans were close to developing an atom bomb, his orders were, we gather, “Shoot to kill.” Sadly, things went awry for Berg after the war. His requests to be assigned to the Israel desk were ignored. Berg was let go by the CIA during the mid-1950s and seems to have spent the rest of his life sponging off relatives. Nevertheless, he was a major league ball player, a spy and a Jew. A number of people have been one of those things, but he’s the only one we know who was all three.

He’s easily the least famous person on this list, but Oscar-winning screenwriter, film critic, and poet Paul Dehn co-wrote two of the greatest spy movies ever, and those movies could not have been more different from each other. 1964′s “Goldfinger” turned the increasingly successful, and increasingly tongue-in-cheek, James Bond series into an enormous worldwide craze. Martin Ritt’s classic 1965 film of John le Carré ‘s “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” presented spying as a grimy, sad and morally bankrupt endeavor. (It also features the first ever film appearance of George Smiley.) Dehn, it turns out, was an ex-operative personally acquainted with both Ian Fleming and John le Carré. Moreover, on the DVD extras of the outstanding 2008 Criterion reissue of “Spy,” le Carré outs Dehn as a paid assassin during World War II. Since Quentin Tarantino clearly knows everything relating to movies — and knows it before we do — we can’t stop wondering if the courageous, highly intelligent, and apparently deadly former film critic Dehn might have been the inspiration for Archie Hickox of “Inglorious Basterds.” True, Dehn was gay — actually, we don’t really know that Archie isn’t — and he had the luck to survive the war. Dehn also went on to script 1974′s “Murder on the Orient Express” and all of the 70s sequels to the original “Planet of the Apes,” and we’re not sure if Archie would do that. Even so, until we hear directly from Tarantino that Paul Dehn wasn’t the inspiration for one of our favorite recent supporting characters, we’re going to assume he was.