Anybody who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s pretty much exclusively knew James Bond to be the visage of a one Mr. Roger Moore. With frequent movie-of-the-week airings of his films, Moore’s cocksure, smoothly brutal version of the world’s greatest secret agent is still for many the definitive version of the character. And I have to say, even though his seven films were often silly (if not downright stupid), Moore always delivered his quips with the same droll eye-twinkle that made him the perfect casting choice in the first place.

Now, with the sad news of the 89-year-old actor’s passing, I think it’s time we look at Roger Moore’s (00)7 coolest moments as James Bond.

007 – A View to a Kill (1985)
Moore’s final Bond film—when he was 57 years old, and even he was like “uhh, I’m too old to do this, right?”—is by far my least favorite of them, but it’s still got some amazing set pieces and Moore still acts the crap out of it. Toward the beginning of the film, Bond is in Paris and gives chase to a mysterious assassin called May Day (played by Grace Jones), and he jumps onto the Eiffel Tower’s lift and steals a hapless cab driver’s car with aplomb.

006 – Octopussy (1983)
The penultimate Moore film is arguably the most boring of them—I’m pretty sure the plot is just about Faberge eggs—but the opening sequence gave us a typically awesome action sequence. This time out, Bond is driving a horse trailer near an enemy base, but then it’s revealed that the trailer actually houses a tiny jet, which leads to some awesome aerial maneuvering.

005 – Moonraker (1979)
Moonraker is a polarizing film, not least because it routinely veers into parody, both self and otherwise, and while I have a childlike love of the final 45-minute space station laser battle (it was directly trying to rip-off Star Wars), Moore isn’t especially cool in it. But, the opening of the movie gives us some of his best work, and an absolutely phenomenal bit of skydiving photography. And Moore is one of the only people who can make that kind of grandpa-ish light jacket seem super awesome.

004 – The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
There’s tons of great action and stunt sequences in The Man with the Golden Gun, but part of what made Moore’s Bond so spectacular was his way with words and his air of both erudition and menace at pretty much every turn. This scene finds Bond questioning the specialty gun maker who supplied the titular assassin with his particular $1 million each bullets. And boy, this guy is lucky Bond’s such a crack shot.

003 – Live and Let Die (1973)
Moore’s inaugural outing was a direct attempt to ape the success of the Blaxploitation movement that was happening in the early ’70s. There are some definite problematic elements to this but Moore, at the very least, maintains the Bond-ness throughout. And one thing that his version of the character always was was crafty; after being stranded on a tiny mound surrounded by crocodiles and alligators, Bond first tries to use his brand new magnetic wristwatch to fetch a boat, but when that doesn’t work, he has to use his head…and also the heads of several hungry bayou residents.

002 – The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Hands down my favorite (and, come on, the best) of Moore’s films is this pull-out-all-the-stops action flick The Spy Who Loved Me, which sees Bond’s British agent forced to team up with a Soviet Agent code named XXX (Barbara Bach) on the hunt for a megalomaniac with a fish fetish. There’s a great deal of undersea photography in this one, and easily the franchise’s best non-Aston Martin car, the submarine-converting Lotus Espirit. Its initial dive shows off Moore’s utter suaveness in the face of seemingly certain death.

001 – For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Bond is always a ruthless sort of character, but—despite the supercilious exterior—he’s never more ruthless than when played by Roger Moore. In the best of his ’80s outings, Moore expresses that by following up a car chase with a henchman—who killed one of Bond’s friends, BTW—by kicking his dangling car off a cliff. That’s some cold blooded spy stuff right there.

Roger Moore will be missed, for truly nobody did it better.

What are your favorite Roger Moore James Bond moments? Share them in the comments below!

Image: MGM/Sony

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!