10 November 2002 16:35
OF HUMAN BONDAGE
Pierce Brosnan has just stepped off of Pinewood Studio's famous 007 soundstage and he's covered in sweat.
Saving the world is hot work, it seems, even without the additional burden of filming in one of the exotic locations the
James Bond franchise is famous for.
But today we are in Buckinghamshire; not that you'd know it as the stage is dressed to convince us that our hero
is fighting his way thorough a burning Russian cargo plane flying low over North Korea. Right now, though, Brosnan has
had enough of taking on evil maniacs intent on world domination and is more interested in finding a cigarette, which he
lights before flopping on to his dressing-room sofa and sighing just a little bitterly: "Oh, the magic of it
all."
This is Brosnan's fourth outing as the British agent with a winning line in high-powered women, high-tech gizmos
and high-maintenance cocktails. Even though it is the longest-running (20 and counting) and most successful series in
movie history and Brosnan is proud of his part in it, you can't escape the suspicion that - with his 50th birthday
rapidly approaching, and "the new breed of secret agent" personified by Vin Diesel's Xander Cage in xXx
snapping at his heels - Brosnan feels that his Walther PPK- waving days are numbered. "Where I am now feels like a
bit of a crossroads," he says, confirming those suspicions. "I've had a bit of fame, had a bit of
success, but what will I do in the next 10 years?
"Bond will pass," he continues. "I've experienced the grandiose feeling of being Bond, with the
doors opening in restaurants, the clothes, the watches, the cars. But then it passes and somebody else is Bond. And what
do you have? All the stuff, yes, but what do you have inside you? What will excite you? How do I test myself? Where do I
go as an actor?"
Where Brosnan will go as an actor when Die Another Day has disappeared from the world's cinema screens is
clearly something that has been occupying the actor of late. If not exactly the world's worst Savile-Row-designed
straight-jacket, the Bond series appears to have taken its toll on Brosnan. "Am I an actor or am I a movie
star?" he asks himself as much as anyone else as he settles into his subject. "I mean, you always have your
demons, but you try not to dwell on the flaws. It's important not to let them bring you down. So you try to take
risks. The life of an actor is about creating and destroying the whole time. I reinvent myself all along. Actors are
outside of the human frame, looking in. And it's a ridiculous, arrogant and pompous way to be."
It is something of a luxury for Brosnan - or any other actor for that matter - to find himself at this sort of
crossroads. You wonder what the young Brosnan would have given to be able to ask this kind of "ridiculous, pompous
and arrogant" question. When you factor in the biographical details that remind you that his upbringing was by no
means conventional, you begin to understand why that star-like sparkle never fades from his eyes even when he is
exhausted, covered in sweat and unsure of his future.
Pierce Brosnan was born in the small town of Navan, in County Meath, Ireland in 1953. His mother, Mary, was just 19
years old when she gave birth and, before baby Brosnan's first birthday, his father had deserted the family home
leaving young Pierce to be shuffled around from relative to relative. At the age of 11, the Pierce parcel was passed
back to his mother who, by this time, had resettled in Putney, west London. It is an oft-told story, now passed into
Bond folklore, that it was at this point that Pierce was taken - by his mother's new boyfriend, and soon- to-be
husband, Bill Carmichael - to the cinema for the first time; the film he was taken to see was Goldfinger, the third
outing for Sean Connery in the role of the British agent with a licence to kill.
He left school at 15 and spent a couple of years trying to make ends meet as a commercial illustrator before becoming
a mini-cab driver. With time to think behind the wheel, Brosnan slowly realised that, since his first cinema outing, the
thing he most wanted to be was an actor. He also realised that if he was ever going to get anywhere, he would have to
learn to act.
In 1973, Brosnan enrolled at London's Drama Centre. Three years later, he emerged a fully trained actor with a
head full of dreams. He paid his dues in provincial rep, won his first substantial role in Tennessee Williams's The
Red Devil Battery Sign, which flopped, before being cast by Franco Zeffirelli in his West End play Filumena. It was here
Brosnan met and fell in love with his first wife, Cassandra.
On a professional roll, he landed his first film part - as an Irish assassin - in the influential and incendiary The
Long Good Friday, and it was in this, that Brosnan was spotted by an American casting agent who gave him a part in the
US mini-series The Manions of America, which in turn led to a studio-paid-for set of US-friendly teeth and the starring
role in Remington Steele as a debonair playboy detective.
When NBC axed Remington Steele in 1986 after its early success had trailed off, Brosnan was approached by Cubby
Broccoli to replace the creaking Roger Moore in the role of James Bond. The publicity Brosnan received as a result of
this convinced NBC to grant Remington Steele one more series and they held Brosnan to his contract. The part of Bond
went to Timothy Dalton.
It was a set-back for Brosnan. But perspective was restored, tragically, when his wife for 10 years, Cassandra, died
from ovarian cancer in 1991. Brosnan committed himself to work, became an ambassador for Women's Health Issues for
the Entertainment Industry and devoted himself to making sure that his three children (Christopher and Charlotte, from
Cassandra's first marriage; and Sean from their time together) would never suffer the neglect that he himself had
grown up with.
When Mel Gibson and Liam Neeson turned down the chance to replace Dalton, the part was offered again to a now NBC
contract-free Brosnan. "Having been to the post once before and then to have it taken away from me, was
gutting," he says now. "And then for it to come around again... Well, it was a mighty opportunity and I had
nothing to lose, so I just decided to give it my all. The day the phone rang and they said the job was on, I just said,
`Look, I don't want to be standing there at the altar a second time waiting. So make sure it is.' Then, as
soon as it was set, it was just tunnel vision. Every day was just focused on being Bond.
"It's like no other acting job. It's so ingrained in the cinematic consciousness that you have all
this crap you have to deal with. You have to make peace with that, and try not to be distracted by the fact that some
people are saying you're right for the part, while others are saying you're not. And even though I grew up
with Sean Connery as my Bond, and he's the one you want to take the belt from, you have to forget all the other
guys who have played the role before you."
In fact, Brosnan's debut, GoldenEye, took a record $350m (pounds 250m) at the box office. Tomorrow Never Dies in
1997 and The World is Not Enough in 1999 reinforced the Bond boom, which brings us back to Die Another Day and whether
there may be a fifth Bond in Brosnan. "Well, I'd love to see it go back to basics," he says. "But
the audiences now are so young and they want explosives and the big bang, so if they don't get them they're
disappointed.
"Anyway," he continues, "this job is hard enough without me going to the mat and pulling my hair out.
So, if the punters want brown shoes, give them brown shoes, but give them brown shoes with a little bit of sparkle.
People want to go to the pictures and have a good evening out. So the gadgets are part of it now. The big set pieces are
part of it, that's the game. And within all that, you have to fight for the character - what is he hungry for,
motivated for within the drama. Let me be quite clear," he says, "I have to take Bond seriously if I am to
find my way into this character. I do sometimes think, `Jesus! What am I rattling on about this series of light
entertainment for?' But basically, Bond is someone who has to survive at all costs... which makes him rather like
an actor, I suppose."
To survive as an actor, what Brosnan has done is films outside of the 007 zone. John Boorman's The Tailor of
Panama, Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! and Roger Donaldson's Dante's Peak to name but three. "I pick my
own journeys, the people I want to work with and, if the film is successful, that's the icing on the cake. I'm
a working actor, a journeyman actor."
Occasionally, though, amid the graft, Brosnan can be forgiven for granting himself a licence to dream: what if the
people he "wants to work with" were given the Bond brand to customise? He laughs heartily at the suggestion
but is clearly fascinated by the potential. "Well Tim Burton would give it a nightmarish quality," he says.
"But it would be fascinating. And there's no reason why he shouldn't do a Bond. He's done Batman and
the man knows how to move a camera. So I'd certainly have him on my list."
Who else? "John Woo, John McTiernan, Ang Lee, David Fincher, Neil Jordan... He would be mighty!" No
shortage of contenders, then, but reality returns as he slumps and admits: "But, you know, they that run it have
the say. And the producers are going to do what they're going to do. Michael Wilson [the late Cubby Broccoli's
stepson] and Barbara Broccoli [Broccoli's daughter] have been doing it since the cradle. I'm the hired gun.
I'm the actor and that's it."
It must gall Brosnan that the most successful of his non-Bond outings came from his most Bond-like character. In 1999
he played playboy art- thief Thomas Crown in the part made famous by Steve McQueen in 1968. This irony was not lost on
Brosnan. "For me, Thomas Crown was a man who had everything the world could possibly give him: he lived a lifestyle
of boats and planes and the ivory tower, but he did not have love. He couldn't find a partner in life who could
equal him."
Unlike Thomas Crown, Brosnan appears to have been lucky enough to have found two partners who can equal him. Last
year, the actor married his longtime companion (and fellow actor) Kelly Shaye Smith, with whom he has two sons, Dylan
Thomas, five, and Paris Beckett, not yet two. He is famously guarded about their private life but talks about
Kelly's love of gardening and his own love of painting and literature, as if you couldn't read that into their
choice of children's names.
"I suppose it's the Celtic soul that just seems to have melancholy in it," he muses. "Those
dreads and fears that can just pop up in broad daylight. You can, though, turn them to your advantage as long as you
don't piss them away with the bottle or by putting something in your nose. But I can't succumb to what was
done to my ancestors although I can have strong feelings about what happened to my country, Ireland. So I have to create
my own destiny. Bond has been a fantastic stepping stone which I use to my best advantage. My intention is to return to
Ireland and make films there."
And with that, we are back to talking about what Brosnan talks about best. The movies and his part in them.
Tellingly, he returns to the subject of The Thomas Crown Affair. "When I was making that film," he says,
"my main concern was that I wanted the character to be elegant. But not like Bond. I didn't want him jumping
out of helicopters. In fact," he says, fixing you with those ever-sparkling eyes, "it was a fine line not to
sneer at Bond." It's a line you feel Brosnan walks every day of his life.
`Die Another Day' opens on 22 November
[UKIR [UK & Ireland Intelligence Wire]] |
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