You Only Live Twice is the first James Bond film directed by Lewis Gilbert in 1970.
The James Bond series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming , who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections . You Only Live Twice ( 1967 ) is the fifth spy film in the James Bond series , and the fifth to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond . You Only Live Twice is the first Bond film to be directed by Lewis Gilbert , who later directed the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me and the 1979 film Moonraker , both starring Roger Moore . You Only Live Twice is the eleventh novel ( and twelfth book ) in Ian Fleming 's James Bond series of stories . In 1967 , it was released as the fifth entry in the Eon Productions James Bond film series , starring Sean Connery as Bond .