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Home > People Index Page > Pierce Brosnan
Published November/December 1997
Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan.
Pegged as the Best Bond Since Sean Connery, the former "Remington Steele" Star Takes a Hard Look at Himself
By Paul Chutkow
There is a hush on the set. Smoke and the smell of
cordite billow through the dark, sinister interior of the enemy
ship. Pierce Brosnan, clad in guerrilla black, a machine gun strapped
to his arm, crouches in shadow, coiled at the ready.
"Action!"
Bond leaps forward, gun blazing, and running through a hail of gunfire
he reaches the enemy rocket launcher. Coolly, expertly, he wheels it
around, arms it, aims it and zeroes in for the kill.
"Cut! Good. Good."
Brosnan looks pleased. So does Roger Spottiswoode, the director of
Tomorrow Never Dies, the 18th installment of the adventures of James
Bond, of Her Majesty's Secret Service. They do two more takes, then
Brosnan, his shirt soaked with sweat, comes over to say hello.
"Hard work, " I say.
Brosnan smiles. "It's an honest way to make a living."
In person and up close, Brosnan is just as handsome as he is on
screen. The cool blue eyes, the strong jaw, the easy smile, the
jet-black hair that tends to tumble down his forehead,
Gable-style. But seeing him here on the big sound stage at Pinewood
Studios, just west of
London, is still something of a shock. In Goldeneye, his Bond was
light and lean, and you could see traces of that coltish charm he used
to exude as detective Remington Steele, the TV role that first
endeared him to American audiences. No longer. Brosnan has put on
weight and muscle. He's a tall man, six foot two, and he now has the
brawn and bearing, the rugged maleness, to look every inch as powerful
and charismatic as Commander Bond.
Bond, of course, is a mammoth role to fill. Ian Fleming gave his hero
a larger-than-life aura, and on screen Sean Connery imbued the role
with a panache and wit as deadly as Bond's fabled Walther PPK. When
Roger Moore took on the mantle for seven films, he played Bond in a
lighter tone, at times bordering on self-parody. Timothy Dalton?
George Whatshisname? Well, let's just say they added little to the
Bond myth and mystique. Brosnan is a different story. His Goldeneye
was made for $50 million and has grossed more than $350 million
worldwide in theatrical sales alone; video and TV revenues are even
higher. The budget this time is $75 million, but no one seems
nervous. The consensus is that Brosnan has grown into the role, he
truly is Bond now, with the mantle, the aura and the
bankability. Indeed, all over the set you hear the same verdict:
"Brosnan is the best Bond since Connery."
"Pierce owns the role now," Spottiswoode says between takes. "He's
wonderful. He has great confidence. Wit. Irony. And he's a terribly
nice man."
A few hours later, near the close of this long day's shoot, the man of
the hour is back in his trailer, taking a breather. He takes off his
shirt, towels down and checks his schedule with Adrian Bell, his
personal assistant. Then he wraps the towel around his shoulders,
stretches back on a big couch and lights a fine cigar, an El Rey del
Mundo from Cuba. A perfect time for a smoke and a comforting way to
decompress, to climb out from under the weight of the Bond persona.
Brosnan is 44 now, with a lot of character in his face, and he
immediately comes across as a man's man, solid, balanced, comfortable
with himself. Even with a high-profile $75 million investment riding
on his shoulders. With visitors, either on the set or now in his
trailer, Brosnan is exceptionally warm and gracious, and he gives no
hint of arrogance or pretense. He's also a proud papa. As soon as he
settles in for a chat, Brosnan is eager to show off the latest photos
of Dylan Thomas, his new baby boy. And he coos, unabashedly, about
Keely Shaye Smith, Dylan's mother and Brosnan's partner for the past
three years. "Quite a photographer, isn't she? Wonderful eye."
Unlike some Hollywood actors with gargantuan egos, Brosnan comes off
as both a refreshing surprise and a bit of a mystery. Could this new
Bond actually be modest and gentle at his core? Could the actor now
embodying one of the screen's biggest legends not have a head the size
of Manhattan? What gives here? The answers soon come forth. For Pierce
Brosnan has the Irish gift for gab; he's a born raconteur. Words flow
from his lips like Guinness from a spout. And his candor is
astonishing, almost as astonishing as the story he unfurls.
"Childhood was fairly solitary," Brosnan begins, puffing on his
cigar. "I grew up in a very small town in southern Ireland. I never
knew my father. He left when I was an infant and I was left in the
care of my mother and my grandparents. To be Catholic in the '50s, and
to be Irish Catholic in the '50s, and have a marriage which was not
there, a father who was not there, consequently, the mother, the wife
suffered greatly. My mother was very courageous. She took the bold
steps to go away and be a nurse in England. Basically wanting a better
life for her and myself. My mother came home once a year, twice a
year. Consequently, there was a certain amount of early loss in that
young boy's life.
"It wasn't all bleak. We lived on the outskirts of the town of Navan,
so there was the countryside to play in. My grandfather was a really
wonderful, kind, gentle man, and very well respected in the
community. My grandmother was a darker person, I really can't speak
very clearly about her, but she had a certain magic as well. Because I
was so solitary, and we lived, as I say, on the outskirts of town,
across the River Boyne, one was an outsider. An only child.
"Then my grandparents died, one after the other. And I lived with an
aunt. Then I lived with an uncle. Eventually, though, they wanted to
get on with their own lives and they didn't have room for a young
boy. So I was sent to live with a woman named Eileen, who had a place
in a poor part of town. She had her own children and she also had
lodgers. She agreed to take Pierce in, and I moved upstairs with the
lodgers, all grown men with jobs. One worked in the mill. One worked
in a local bank. And then there was another bed for whoever came in
visiting. There was this long room, and there were these iron beds
with old mattresses on them. This is where the three lodgers were. At
the very end of the room, there was my little bed. With a curtain
around it, with newspapers pinned on it, so the light wouldn't shine
in when the guys came home.
"I grew up being taught by the Christian brothers, who were dreadful,
dreadful human beings. Just the whole hypocrisy. And the cruelness of
their ways toward children. They were very sexually
repressed. Bitter. Cowards, really. I have nothing good to say about
them and will have nothing good to say about them. It was ugly. Very
ugly. Dreadful. I learnt nothing from the Christian brothers--except
shame.
"It sounds pretty bleak all of this, but that's what it was. No wonder
I'm an actor. But you learn to be happy within all of that; you learn
how to create your own happiness. And you learn to forgive. You learn
to rise above it. And you learn to view people with a different kind
of clarity, because they've hurt you and because there was no one
there for you to go to. There was not this symbol, the father figure,
or the mother. So you learned to find your own independence and
survive. If you didn't know, you acted as if you did know.
"And Eileen was great to live with. I was surrounded by kids and out
in the streets. And yet it was kind of strange, a bit like David Lynch
in a way. Eileen was a big-bosomed woman, baking bread with the apron
wrapped around her. A big, warm momma. And those were my last three
years in Ireland."
Brosnan puffs on his cigar. These childhood memories seem so fresh, so
vivid to him, even after all these years. "I made the big mistake of
telling some of this in the early days of 'Remington Steele.' So the
doors have been opened and it is so hard to close those kind of
doors. But as you go back through the doors, when you get asked the
questions, it comes with a certain form of therapy, when you think
about it, when you conjure it up, when you paint the picture as the
years go on...Catholic upbringing. Choirboy. Altar boy. The whole nine
yards. It was an Irish childhood.
"I lived there until the age of 10 and then, finally, when my mother
passed her finals, in 1964, I went to live with her in London. The
reunion with my mother was joyous. Finally, I had my mother. And that
was my first journey, out of Ireland, to England. When you go to a
very large city, a metropolis like London, as an Irish boy of 10, life
suddenly moves pretty fast. From a little school of, say, seven
classrooms in Ireland, to this very large comprehensive school, with
over 2,000 children. And you're Irish. And they make you feel it; the
British have a wonderful way of doing that, and I had a certain deep
sense of being an outsider.
"My mother was working full-time as a nurse. We had a small apartment
in a house in south London. There was an old lady in there,
Mrs. Slanie, and when I would come home from school she would take
care of me and bring me into her living room with chintz and all these
knick-knacks and bric-a-brac. She had budgies (canaries), she had two
of them, and I'd sit with her after school. It was a world I just
wasn't used to. She was very English. The tone of her voice,
everything just so. And I got to know the street, the street we lived
in. Slowly but surely I made friends and had a group of friends.
"In Ireland, I had been brought up on a diet of old Mother Riley and
Norman Wisdom movies, which would not translate to readers in America,
but they're black-and-white comedies made here. In the summer of '64,
my mother and Bill, my stepfather, took me to the movies and I saw
Goldfinger. And here I sat in this cinema, on Putney High Street, with
this spectacle, this magical event taking place before my eyes, called
James Bond. The music, the women, the shimmering silhouettes of
nakedness, and this wonderful woman lying on the bed. Three, four
weeks before, I had been in Ireland, in a tiny town, and here I was in
the great metropolis, London. Now, maybe the seed was sown there, I
don't know, but I thought James Bond was very cool.
"I wanted to be a commercial artist, I wanted to be an artist. I still
am, I still paint. At 18, I was working at this little studio in
Putney, south London. I was a trainee commercial artist. I went into
work one morning, I was hanging my coat up, and I was talking to a
fellow colleague who was in the photographic department. We were
talking about movies. I loved movies. I had no real dreams to be an
actor, but I suppose being in movies had a magical quality to it. And
he said, 'Well, I belong to a theater company. A theater club
actually. You should come down.'
"And I did. I went down that evening. It was a winter's evening and I
hopped on the subway, the tube, and entered through the doors of this
very funky, happening place, where there were Black Panther evenings,
experimental theater companies, and there were jugglers and mimes. It
was in the late '60s--'69, '70, I think--and I joined this workshop.
"I was petrified. I had been asked to be in school plays but always
declined. I thought they were rather... I just had no desire to be in
plays. But here I found myself in this workshop. A rather dark studio,
with about 30 other people doing voice and movement exercises, which
were completely alien to me. But so exhilarating. There was no
censorship or shame allotted to one and you could be anything you
wanted to be.
"So I went that Thursday. I went twice a week. I went three times a
week. I went down to the Oval House Theater Club every night after
work and eventually gave up the job in commercial art. And we formed a
theater company. I was the youngest member, working with people who
were actors, who were teachers, musicians, writers. We formed a
company called the Oval House Theater Company. During the day I would
work. I was a waiter. I cleaned houses. I worked in a factory, a
bottling factory, just to supplement my income. It could only be a
job, really, that you could do either in the morning or in the late
evening.
"When I found acting, or when acting found me, it was a liberation. It
was a stepping stone into another life, away from a life that I had,
and acting was something I was good at, something which was
appreciated. That was a great satisfaction in my life.
"I did fringe theater for about two years. And because I didn't have
any formal training in acting, I decided to go to drama school. I went
for three years, at a place called The Drama Centre, in north
London. I did repertory theater and slowly got roles on TV and in
films."
And then came Cassandra Harris. "We met in 1974, shortly after I left
drama school. I met her through David Harris, one of Richard Harris'
nephews, who had always spoken at drama school about his aunt. One day
I was reading for a part in Chelsea, and he said, 'You must come out
and visit.' I went out to visit and I walked into his house, his
aunt's house, and on the dressing table there was this photograph of
this beautiful woman, with two little children beside her. And I said,
'This is your aunt? My God, what a fine looking woman.'
"I think it was a few days later that I actually met Cassie. She'd
come back, she'd been working abroad on a film. I saw her coming down
the staircase and I thought, 'What a beautiful-looking woman.' I never
for an instant thought she was someone I'd spend 17 years of my life
with. I didn't think of wooing her, or attempting to woo her; I just
wanted to enjoy her beauty and who she was.
"But David Harris started doing a bit of matchmaking and it was,
'Really? She does like me? Really, she thinks that? Oh, how
fascinating.' I was doing a play in the West End at that time, and I
began visiting the cousin a lot. He was a friend from grammar school
but not one of my best buddies. But he became a best buddy. And before
we knew it, you fall in love. It just worked. It took a certain
courage on both our parts. Cassie was Australian. She had trained as
an actress in Australia and done television. She had her own talk
show, 'Beauty and the Beast.'
"She left Australia and came to London. She was walking down the
street one day, by the London Palladium. Car pulls up. Black man gets
out. Says, 'You're beautiful; I want to take your photograph.' She
went back to her apartment and says, 'Some black guy came out and gave
me his card. It says Sammy Davis Jr. Who's Sammy Davis Jr.?' He wanted
to take her picture for a magazine.
"We courted, we wooed, we set up a little house together, in
Wimbledon, we posed as man and wife. We lived with Cassie's young
children, Charlotte and Christopher. I'm acting, she's acting. I'm
acting more than she is, as she's bringing up the children. And
suddenly I had a family. And two children. It didn't feel like
that. It just felt so right, only because Cassie had such faith in me
and we had such a wonderful outlook on life. I didn't feel like a
father, I wasn't a father; I was just Pierce. And then I became Daddy
Pierce. And then I became Daddy." The couple married in 1977.
Money was tight and that worried Brosnan. "We were scratching
along. And it would be, 'Are you sure you picked the right man here,
woman? So far so good? Are we hanging in here?' Because she could have
had anyone. There were lots of men around her at that time when I met
her. Merchant bankers. Actors. She moved in circles which I was not
accustomed to. But I was an actor. I was a purist. I was hungry. And I
was determined and I was ambitious. I was also someone who was loving,
someone who was caring, someone who was funny, someone who was
artistic. Someone who had dreams and passion. She had gone through a
lot of suffering herself, a lot of negative pain."
With this kind of love to nurture and protect, Brosnan worked as hard
as he could. "I was doing theater, traveling to Glasgow, to
Manchester. I did two West End productions, a play by Tennessee
Williams, and then I got a part as an IRA terrorist in a movie called
The Long Good Friday, my first film. I also did a TV movie about Irish
horse racing. Some American producers saw it and offered me the lead
in this miniseries called 'Manions of America,' about the Irish potato
famine." It promised to be good money and great exposure.
Soon James Bond entered their lives. Harris landed a part in For Your
Eyes Only, with Roger Moore. "During my early years as an actor, Bond
was never a desire," says Brosnan. "But when Cassie was playing in For
Your Eyes Only, then, of course, it became a joke. I would do my own
impersonations of James Bond. Just for fun. Just driving her home from
work, or going out, or talking about her experience on it. But even
so, it was not an ambition to play James Bond. I had my sights set on
other aspects of the work."
With the proceeds from her Bond role and some of Brosnan's work, they
managed to scrape enough money together in 1979 to buy their first
house. "The house was in foreclosure and it was pretty run down. But
it was magic. There was nothing; we were just living on the
floorboards. It had damp old wallpaper, and I started stripping it and
renovating it and working on it and sanding it and repointing the
fireplaces and knocking down walls. We did it all ourselves; we had no
money at all for that sort of work."
They certainly didn't have any money for luxuries, such as traveling
overseas. As a youth, Brosnan had been captivated by America,
relishing the romantic images it conjured up in his mind. He would
soon have a chance to see them firsthand.
"In going from Ireland to England in 1964, as an Irish boy, it was a
disappointment," Brosnan recalls. "Because I had confused England with
America. I was looking for the big cars with the tail fins and the
very tall buildings. London never really entered into my imagination,
only in name, but America somehow filled me with visions. When the
miniseries was ready to be aired, Cassie suggested we do something
bold. Cassie said we should go to America, we should really go to Los
Angeles for the premiere of this miniseries.
"But how are we going to get to Los Angeles, Cassie? We don't have any
money. We've just bought this bloody house. How are we going to pay
the mortgage?' She said, 'I'll think of a way.' So we took out a
second mortgage on the central heating. We already had central heating
in the house, but she found a loophole, and we went to the bank
manager. I said I had a job in Hollywood and could we get a
£2,000 loan? Somehow the central heating issue came in and we got
the two grand.
"The trip to America, it was such a great joy to go there with Cassie,
to take that leap of faith and go to the New World--all that nonsense
you read about in books. But again it was a liberation. In Los
Angeles, I rented a car from Rent-A-Wreck, a lime green Pacer, with a
cushion, because the springs were coming through, and I got a map and
went on my first interview in Hollywood. Somehow I found my way out to
Laurel Canyon. I got up to the top of Mulholland Drive and the car
broke down, blew up. I did eventually get to the interview and saw a
casting director from Mary Tyler Moore Productions. Boom! They were
looking for Remington Steele.
"The last thing I was looking for was a TV series. I went to America
thinking I was going to work with Scorsese. Taxi Driver I'd seen about
10 times and Mean Streets; that's where my brain was at. I was going
to do movies. But I needed work. I went through several more
interviews and then Cassie and I came home to Wimbledon. Then the call
came: Would I return for a screen test? And it was, 'My God, what have
we done? What have we done? What are we going to do?' Panic, panic,
panic. Don't panic! We'll go to America. We'll take the kids to
America. So Cass, the two kids and I hopped on a plane and went to
America.
"When I first worked on the part, I was bitterly frustrated. 'I'm just
not funny,' I'd tell Cassie. 'I'm just not funny.' Then she told me,
'Just be yourself. Be how you are with me.' The series ran for four
and a half years."
Brosnan and Harris settled into southern California and had a child of
their own, Sean, now 13. And, thanks to "Remington Steele," Brosnan's
lifelong financial worries disappeared. "It was very, very hard
work. My family rarely saw me during the first year. But suddenly we
had this incredible lifestyle. I had these little bits of plastic in
my pocket, which were credit cards. I was so scared to use them. But
once I got the hang of it, I did pretty well. And we moved into this
big house; never do anything by halves."
After so many years of struggle, it gave Brosnan a deep sense of
fulfillment to properly provide for Harris and the kids. "It just
felt so right. And it made being an actor even more enjoyable and
more immediate. In the sense that you had to work. Because you
had to provide. And providing was a wonderful feeling. It was a
great responsibility, and one that did provide a great sense of
achievement and happiness. And that's all one wants, really."
During his "Remington Steele" years, the show made a brief visit
to Ireland, and Brosnan had an unexpected visitor: Tom Brosnan,
the father he had never known. "Our trip to Ireland generated a
lot of press, and I suspected my father might surface. And he
did. One Sunday afternoon he came to the hotel. He came up from
Kerry, with many first cousins I never knew. There came a knock
on the door and you knew that when you open the door, the man
you're going to see is your father. I opened the door and there
was Tom. I expected to see a very tall man. He was a man of
medium stature, pushed-back silver hair, flinty eyes and a
twizzled jaw. He had a very strong Kerry accent. And Tom and I
sat and had afternoon tea, with all those cousins in the room.
"We were strangers when we met. And I regret that we met under
such circumstances. I wish I had met him in a pub or somewhere
on his own terms. I would have loved to have sat with him alone
and just talked. There are parts of my character, I just don't
know where they come from. They say he was a snappy dresser and
a great whistler."
Did he feel like family?
"No. No. And of course the burning question beneath the course
of the conversation was, 'Why did you leave?' But how do you cut
to such a question after such a long absence? I was 33 at the
time. I had been angry with him. And I was angry after the
meeting. Because I didn't ask him the questions. There was
enough pain already."
During his third year doing "Remington Steele," Brosnan
developed a taste for fine cigars. "I wouldn't call myself a
connoisseur, but I know a good cigar when I see one. I enjoy
them. People give me fine cigars and I enjoy sharing them with
people who really appreciate a fine cigar. There have been times
when I've gone out with business guys and smoked cigars, and
they've been among the most pleasurable evenings I've had. Good
cigars and good company. Hard to beat."
Years later, when he made the recently released Dante's Peak on
location in Idaho, cigars again proved to be one of the great
pleasures of his day. "I had my fishing rod with me, I'd take a
walkie-talkie with
me, so the set could be in communication with me, and I would spend
the morning fishing. Or sometimes I'd go out in the evenings. The
cigar was always a great companion."
Painting, too, remains one of his closest companions. His work is
figurative and he works with color, and he usually travels with an
easel and paints. "Painting and smoking a good cigar is wonderful," he
says. "They help me relax."
As his El Rey del Mundo burns down low, Brosnan comes to his first
rendezvous with Bond. In 1986, Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, the famous
Bond producer, was looking for the right man to take the mantle from
Roger Moore. Brosnan was exactly what Broccoli had in mind. "I was
offered the Bond, I tested for the Bond, came here to the studio. I
had been through wardrobe and had even been photographed with the late
Cubby Broccoli. But there was a clause in my contract [for "Remington
Steele"] that said if the show got canceled, NBC had 60 days to try to
place it with another network." On the 59th day, NBC decided to renew
the series, and Mary Tyler Moore Productions refused to let him out of
his contract.
"Cassie, I think, took it harder than I did. Because you want for your
partner in life, you want the best for your partner. It just didn't
happen. Timothy Dalton was signed the next day. And I became the guy
who coulda been, shoulda been, might have been Bond."
Losing Bond hurt--and worse was to come. By now Brosnan had expanded
his credentials with lead roles in the NBC miniseries "Noble House"
and in a miniseries for the BBC called "Nancy Astor," and he had
co-starred with Michael Caine in the film version of Frederick
Forsyth's The Fourth Protocol. In 1987, still fuming about the Bond
that should have been, Brosnan and Harris went to India, where he was
to play the lead in The Deceivers, a Merchant-Ivory production.
During the shoot in India, in the baking heat of Rajasthan, the
usually effervescent Harris began to tire and feel run down. "She got
very fatigued, very worn out, and we weren't sure what it was. She had
had pain, slight pains, and in a checkup, six months before, the
doctor had said, 'It's all right. Don't worry.' If only he had looked
closely. When we finished in India, we came back to London. She went
to the doctor and he took her into the hospital the very next night."
The diagnosis was full-blown ovarian cancer. "A young woman making her
way through life, as a mother, as an actress. When your partner gets
cancer, then life changes. Your timetable and reference for your
normal routines and the way you view life, all this changes. Because
you're dealing with death. You're dealing with the possibility of
death and dying. And it was that way through the chemotherapy, through
the first-look operation, the second look, the third look, the fourth
look, the fifth look.
"It came with a certain grace. Actually, life was sweet. Life had an
incredible peace to it. Because you cherished every moment. The ordeal
of going into the doctor's for the examination. To see if the white
[blood cell] counts are up, or to see if there's anything there. And
then the joy of it being all right, and coming back out and going down
to the beach. Those moments were just intoxicating."
Their struggle against the cancer lasted four years. "Cassie was very
positive about life. I mean, she had the most amazing energy and
outlook on life. She could read people extremely well. She had, above
all, the greatest sense of humor. She had this wonderful laugh, which
her children have inherited. Both Christopher and Charlotte, and Sean,
have this contagious way about them, of making people feel good. Which
is such a gift."
Harris died in 1991. "It was and is a terrible loss," says
Brosnan. "And I see it reflected, from time to time, in my
children. How do you carry on afterwards? Slowly. Very, very, very
slowly. It hurts. And you have to sit and endure it. There's nothing
else to do; it won't go away."
Brosnan's world would never be the same. The loss of his wife, he
said, brought him to his knees. But now he had to be both father and
mother; for their three children, he was now the sole source of
emotional sustenance and stability. To get himself through, to give
his children the reassurance that life would regain some form of
balance, Brosnan somehow found the fortitude to keep on working. He
made a string of movies, two of which he is particularly proud: Bruce
Beresford's Mister Johnson, the 1990 film in which Brosnan plays a
British colonial administrator in West Africa, and the 1993 smash
comedy Mrs. Doubtfire, with Robin Williams and Sally Field.He played
the role of Field's handsome, pompous suitor, to the great irritation
of Williams' character. "Mrs. Doubtfire was a wonderful, beautiful ray
of sunshine in my career. For the first time I was in a studio picture
and I was working with wonderful actors who were all working at the
top of their game. It allowed me to do comedy and play a character who
was viewed as a jerk."
Then Bond reappeared, and this time it was meant to be. Goldeneye
turned out to be a huge success, and Brosnan is glad now that he did
not take on the role back in 1986. "Bond is a man who is in his
40s. Bond is a man with a past. He's seasoned, a man who has loved and
lost. And he's somewhat of a solitary figure. Playing Bond at this
time in my life is much better than I could have played it in my 30s."
Brosnan won't talk about Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton. But there is
no way to sidestep Sean Connery's Bond. "I cannot replicate or be what
Connery was. He's the only one in my books. And when I did Goldeneye,
he was the one that I wanted to be able to stand up there
beside. There was no sense of intimidation; even then I felt a strong
sense of who I was. I just wanted to make the man human. And I wanted
to find my own reality within it."
Brosnan has never met Connery. "He hasn't sought me out. We shall
meet. At the right time. People ask me, constantly, 'Did you ask for
advice?' Nonsense. Why would I go to him for advice? I was seeking
advice, but you have to find your own path with such a
character. Someday I would dearly love to sit with the guy and drink
good malt whiskey and smoke cigars somewhere quiet and hear what he
has to say. Because he's certainly someone I admire greatly, the way
he has conducted himself in the business."
Tomorrow Never Dies is the story of a global media baron run amok. The
villain mogul, played by Jonathan Pryce, runs a worldwide newspaper
called Tomorrow, and he operates a global satellite TV network with
the capacity to beam into every TV set in the world. Inspired by how
CNN capitalized on the Gulf War to build its global audience, the
mogul decides he's going to provoke a little war of his own, by
stirring up trouble with China.
Roger Spottiswoode, best known for the brilliant Under Fire and other
films, went into this project with one clear objective: to bring the
James Bond films firmly into the 1990s. "Since Connery, too many of
the Bonds edged toward self-parody and the ludicrous," Spottiswoode
says. Now the aim is to keep what everyone loves about Bond-- the
characters "Q" and "M," the signature music, the high-tech gadgetry
and a terrific villain--and use them to create an action thriller with
contemporary texture, pace and realism.
"This film will be darker, tougher than many past Bonds," the director
says about Tomorrow Never Dies, which opens in England on Dec. 12 and
in U.S. theaters on Dec. 19. He's using moodier lighting and more
realistic sets. The media baron is also cut close to reality; hello
Ted, hello Rupert. To foment trouble with China, the baron uses a
stealth ship cruising in Chinese waters and this, too, is a touch of
high-tech realism. Spottiswoode claims the U.S. Navy already has one
in the water. China also makes a believable foe for Bond and the West;
no other country looms as such a likely or formidable adversary.
Brosnan believes that the character of Bond--and the image of maleness
that he radiates--also need to be updated and made more real. He feels
Bond needs to be more accessible, more human, more emotionally open
and mature. "The audience nowadays is so sophisticated, compared with
the days of Sean Connery. The heroes we have now, and the actors we
have, men like Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson, bring an incredible charm
and accessibility and vulnerability to their maleness. Which can only
be a celebration of the man, the actor and the character. And this
makes for even better heroes."
Playing Bond the super-male, imprinting that image on millions of
impressionable minds, carries with it a heavy responsibility, as
Brosnan knows full well. He remembers the impact Bond had on him as a
boy of 10, when he saw Goldfinger, and he knows that many kids go to a
Bond movie and come out wanting to be as cool as Bond, as tough as
Bond. "That's what you strive for as an actor. And that's what one
still goes to the movies for, to go in and be transported, to be
turned on, to say, 'I want to be that, or I want to live like that, or
I want to feel that way'. It's pure entertainment, but it's more than
that. It changes people's lives."
Bond, of course, has already changed Brosnan, most tangibly in his
star status and his impact in the film industry. Playing Agent 007 has
also opened many new doors: "Bond has been a celebration in my life. I
adore the role. I don't feel trapped by it. When Goldeneye began to
soar high and mighty, I formed a company and I used it to my
advantage. Bond allowed me to go off and do something like Mars
Attacks, The Mirror Has Two Faces and Dante's Peak." With his new
company, dubbed Irish Dream Time, Brosnan produced and appeared in a
movie called The Nephew, about a unique and moving love affair in
Ireland. He is now planning a remake of Norman Jewison's 1968 film,
The Thomas Crown Affair.
His new stature in the industry and the public eye has brought Brosnan
new responsibilities that he is happy to embrace. He has become a
prominent supporter of a Los Angeles charitable organization called
Entertainment Industries Foundation/Permanent Charities. He also gives
high-profile support to environmental groups. Because of what his late
wife went through, supporting women's health care has become one of
his top priorities.
Brosnan's renewed prominence in the public eye has brought one
infuriating downside. During the making of Tomorrow Never Dies,
Brosnan became a prime target of the British tabloids and their
shameless gutter sleaze. They ran stories claiming trouble on the set
and in Brosnan's private life. The stories were pure fiction, Brosnan
says, but the damage they caused was all too real.
"It hurts, it stings. It's just shocking, absolutely shocking to read
things about you and your loved ones. It's extremely painful and
hurtful. I haven't received too many barbs from the press, but
certainly now there seems to be an interest from very [small-minded]
people who do not investigate their stories and just basically print
lies."
Brosnan has decided he won't be turning the other cheek; if it happens
again, he'll strike back. "One story in particular really crossed the
bounds. I found out who the man was, and I know where he lives and I
know his life. It's kind of my job to find out who the little shit
was. So if he does it again, I'd nail him. I'd nail him. I've got no
qualms about going after someone like that, if they're going to do
that. It's very damaging to my family."
The tabloid barbs came at a stressful time, when everyone in the
production was working furiously to get Tomorrow Never Dies wrapped,
edited and released by Christmas. To unwind a bit, Brosnan and some of
his pals spent an evening at Monte's on Sloane Street in London,
probably one of the world's classiest cigar clubs. "We wined and dined
and smoked the finest cigars," Brosnan says. "It's a wonderful
place. The cuisine is impeccable. And the interior is designed to look
and feel like an ocean liner. We had a marvelous night out."
This aside, Brosnan these days is counting his blessings. Three years
ago, on a trip to Mexico, he meet Keely Shaye Smith, a TV producer in
Los Angeles. They have been together ever since and are the proud
parents of young Dylan Thomas. When you see Brosnan admiring photos of
little Dylan, photos of a happy daddy playing on the grass with his
baby son, you can understand why the actor feels his life has begun
anew. And when you reflect back on his stories of the pain of his
childhood and the pain of losing his wife, you can see right down to
the roots of Brosnan's evident inner strength and grace under
pressure.
"I've been very lucky in my life," Brosnan says. "Very lucky. I have
been able to go through quite a few lives and still retain a certain
identity and love of life. I have a new life, a new woman, a new
baby. I also have a new realization, as a man and as an actor: This is
where you belong. It's a great feeling, knowing you don't have to
prove yourself or step on tippy toes to be seen or be heard. Just to
be comfortable in who you are." *
Paul Chutkow, a freelance writer based in northern California, is the author of Depardieu, a biography of French actor Gerald Depardieu.
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