Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brendan Brosnan OBE Honis an Irish actor and film producer who after leaving comprehensive school at age 16, began training in commercial illustration. He then went on to train at the Drama Centre in London for three years. Following a stage acting career he rose to popularity in the television series Remington Steele, which blended the genres of romantic comedy, drama, and detective procedural. After the conclusion of Remington Steele, Brosnan appeared in films such as the Cold War...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth16 May 1953
CityDrogheda, Ireland
CountryIreland
The White Palace was pretty impressive. Very impressive, in fact. The day to day running of the set was everybody showed up for work. They are seasoned filmmakers over there. They have an infrastructure for filmmaking, which is very healthy. It's small, but they were tenacious, polite, timely.
Being here by the ocean in Malibu. Living in this beautiful house that we built, that took so long to build. Being in my art studio, painting. Packing my bags tomorrow to go home to Kauai where we have a house. Which all sounds very grand, and I suppose it is, in some respects, but nothing comes from nothing. It all comes from hard work.
There's no question about it. Beaumarie St. Claire and I, we created Irish DreamTime after GoldenEye hit. We made movies like Thomas Crown and The Matador. And in between my stints as James Bond, I'd go off and I'd do something like The Matador or Tailor of Panama, which was spy related, just so I could shake it up. It's a genre which really appeals to me.
I lost track of it thereafter. I wish I had a piece of it. That would have been very, very nice. It was one of those little things they get you on the Bond and then suddenly your face is every which way.
It felt after the Bonds, after my four outings as James Bond, there seemed to be unfinished business. And the way that the Bond finished in my life and the demise of Bond going off stage left into the night, it seemed like there was a certain void there, as they say, of unfinished business.
Sometimes you take time off, and then you look around and you go, "Hello. What happened? Oh dear!"
I love movies. I adore movies. I grew up on Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood and Warren Beatty. The list goes on. Spencer Tracy. I wanted to be in movies.
I certainly got the jokes within the joke, dressing up in a wet suit, sitting in a Twingo, scaling a rubber mountain, dressing up and stealing a diamond, of course. If not now, when?
You need to love everyone.
I didn't think that and I didn't verbalize that to myself or within meetings that we ever had, but we wanted to make a hard-nosed, gritty, realistic spy thriller. Roger talked about using lenses. He shot hi-def, but using anamorphic lenses that he'd found from this warehouse. He was so thrilled with that. Him and Romain [Lacourbas] were just like kids in a toy store with their lenses.
Liam in Taken has been great to see. My boys love it. They love him. And there's just the gravitas to it. It's believable. You know the guy's endured. You know the guy's lived some life. Someone like Liam has lived a lot of life. Myself, I've lived a lot of life. There's loss. There's success. There's loss. There's doubts. And there's some heartbeat there.
So that would be my input and I'd go off and I'd work on another film, and then I'd catch up with them later on in the year. We just kind of nursed the piece along. There was no timeframe. We didn't have anyone pushing us except ourselves to make the film, and a desire. And then the organic kind of naming of Roger; then it happened really fast.
I live a very simple existence when I'm not on the road. Because when I'm on the road making a movie, I'm away from home.
I'm an actor first and foremost. My producing credentials are just to say, "Yeah, I love this story and now let's bring the people, the ensemble together," and I get out of the way. I have no desire to check on schedules and shooting schedules and money and stuff like that.