He doesn't sound threatening, or deadly. He doesn't sound like a superspy licensed to kill. And he doesn't sound one bit like Sean Connery. Which is the way Moore wants it.

He plays Ian Fleming's Agent 007 in the eighth James Bond film, "Live And Let Die," which opens Friday. And although he follows Sean Connery's many movies as the suave, cool hero, he says he plays James Bond with distinction.

"I play him the way Roger Moore plays him. I'm not Sean Connery. We don't look alike so I don't try to play Sean Connery," he says, his soft British accent distant over the phone, but familiar.

Roger Moore has a long history of playing the sophistication and always-in-control hero. He has starred in no less than five TV series - perhaps a record - "The Alaskans," "Ivanhoe," "Maverick," "The Persuaders!" and, of course, "The Saint," which kept him in clover for seven years, and the series is still being shown.

The image of a cold savoir-faire hero is therefore familiar to Roger Moore. And he doesn't mind having a somewhat fantastic, romantic aura. An images "is no handicap," he says. "It pays the rent. I'm very grateful and I don't knock and image I may have gotten."

"There are lots of films in the words. It's hard to decide what to do. The great problem is finding the right vehicle to do in between Bonds." He's limited by contract to non-spy roles. "I supposed action-adventure resembles my current image. There are an awful lot of good scripts, and an awful lot of bad ones."

More says he'd like to do a comedy, or even play a villain in a Bond film. The villains "have wild parts," he says. "They hide behind various disguises of guises. They are larger-than-life people."

He already has signed to do Bond No. 9, "The Man With The Golden Gun," scheduled to begin shooting next year in such exotic locations as SIngapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong.

This one, too, will be co-produced by Harry Saltzman, who is building a home in northeast St. Petersburg [Florida, USA] (and reportedly has purchased an antique Lincoln Continental that once belonged to Henry Ford).

"I try to give him a background in my mind. I ask myself what kind of education I think the character has, his family, the training he went through for his job. It's not a great deal of preparation to do." But it sets the stage for the actor.

"Then the fancy of acting comes in," Moore says. "I love acting. If I didn't, I wouldn't do it. I love my profession. I like story-telling. I like entertaining people, amusing people, endeavoring to give people pleasure."

One bit of pleasure Moore, as Bond, is promising 007 fans - in addition to a myriad of crashes and demolitions and other screen destructions, and lithe women, and judo-karate fights - is a diary. Moore and company are publishing a diary of the making of "Live And Let Die," written, or rather recorded, by Moore each day after shooting.

"I dictated every night into a tape recorder," he explains, "and then we editing out the real filth. It has a lot of reminiscences, day-to-day things that happened on the set that brought to mind other years and other films."

Another telephone in James Bond's hotel suite rings, and this conversation ends. Plainly, Roger Moore doesn't mind being bonded and branded as a super-hero one more time.