I don't know if the whole interview has been posted in this thread somewhere, but I meant to post it last month (forgot). So... if anyone was interested in reading the whole interview here it is...
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PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: Pierce BrosnanA candid conversation with the man who played Bond about life after 007, reinventing himself in Hollywood and how hardship changes you. -- December 2005Pierce Brosnan was recently informed that his martinis will no longer be shaken or stirred because the holders of the James Bond franchise want a new and younger 007. And yet, sipping champagne at his Hawaiian home overlooking the Pacific, Brosnan, hardly a codger at 52, acts as if having been released from Bondage was the best thing that ever happened to him. No wonder: He has a regular spot on various magazines' lists of the era's sexiest and best-looking people, and his latest performance--in the dark comedy The Matador--has won acclaim at Sundance and the Toronto Film Festival. This is his opportunity to reinvent himself, and he claims he's taking advantage of it.
Best known as everyone's favorite post-Sean Connery Bond, Brosnan has a diverse set of films to his credit, ranging from Mars Attacks! to Dante's Peak to After the Sunset. Through his film production company, Irish DreamTime, launched in 1996, he also developed, produced and co-starred in the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, with Rene Russo, and Laws of Attraction, with Julianne Moore, in 2004.
An only child, Brosnan grew up near Dublin. His father, a carpenter, abandoned him and his mother when Brosnan was an infant. His mother moved to England to study nursing, leaving her baby with her parents, both of whom died when Brosnan was six years old. He then lived with a succession of family members and friends and attended a harsh and punitive Catholic school until, at 11, he was reunited with his mother in London. There he was an indifferent student until he entered the Drama Centre and found his calling.
Brosnan jumped to the big screen in 1980 with small roles in The Long Good Friday and The Mirror Crack'd. Moving to Hollywood in 1982, he landed what became a five-season stint on television as the slick private eye Remington Steele. In 1986, with Steele going strong, public opinion polls about potential James Bonds put Brosnan ahead of such other stars as Tom Selleck, Jeremy Irons and Mel Gibson. But Brosnan was contractually stuck on TV. It took nine years, but the public finally got what it wanted when Brosnan was cast as 007 in 1995's GoldenEye. His four Bond films went on to earn nearly $1.5 billion.
In 1980 he married Cassandra Harris, an Australian. From a previous marriage, Harris had two young children, whom Brosnan adopted, and the couple had one son together. Harris died of cancer in 1991 with her husband at her bedside. In 2001 Brosnan married Keely Shaye Smith, an environmentalist and former actress, with whom he has two sons.
We sent Contributing Editor Stephen Rebello, who last interviewed Ewan McGregor for Playboy, to sit down with Brosnan at his estate on Kauai's north shore. His report: "Besides his wife, Brosnan was surrounded by a group of gorgeous female friends and staff--he calls them the mermaids--who discreetly buzzed around the place, making sure there was plenty of food and champagne. You can't walk away unimpressed, and I don't mean just by the gracious house and lush grounds. Brosnan is absurdly good-looking and comes off as a bright, decent guy who has reached a place in his life where his work and his psyche are opening up in exciting ways. He is unassuming and friendly and very much aware of the great challenges ahead of him. After a decade of politically correct Bond movies, he seems extremely happy to have reclaimed his balls."
Playboy: Were you ready to step down as James Bond?
Brosnan: It would have been a trip to do another one. I prepared myself to do it. I psyched myself. But they have set sail. They made their decision. They want to reinvent it and make it a period piece. They want to get a younger guy.
Playboy: How does it feel to be told that you're too old?
Brosnan: It was kind of shocking to have ageism come on me when I was just getting started. It's shocking to be told that you're too old, that you're past your sell-by date.
Playboy: Do we detect some bitterness?
Brosnan: It's bloody frustrating that the [censored]ers pulled out the rug when they did. It was like, "Come on, we're family here. You talk about being a family. You knew my late wife; you know my family now. Yet I get a call from my agents at five in the afternoon in the Bahamas, and I hear that you've shut down negotiations because you don't know how, where or which way to go and that you'll call me next Friday?" What can I say? It's cold, it's juvenile, and it shouldn't be done like that, not after 10 years and four films.
Playboy: After the initial shock did you feel a sense of relief?
Brosnan: Later, yes, I had a wonderful feeling of liberation: "Ahhhh. I'm free of it." I'll always be known as Bond, but now I don't have the responsibility of being an ambassador for a small country ruled by a character.
Playboy: How do you assess your Bond films?
Brosnan: All the movies made money. Creatively, maybe, they could have been stronger, but they were Bond movies, and they advanced a certain degree out of the doldrums where they had been. They were tricky to do. I never really felt as though I nailed it. As soon as they put me into the suit and tie and gave me those lines of dialogue, I felt restricted. It was like the same old same old. I was doing Roger Moore doing Sean Connery doing George Lazenby. I felt as if I were doing a period piece that had been dusted off. They never really took the risks they should have.
Playboy: Do you regret joining the series just when Bond became politically correct and all the sex and rowdy fun was toned down?
Brosnan: It was sad to pick up the reins and then have these restrictions. It would have been great to light up and smoke cigarettes, for instance. It would have been great to have the killing a little bit more real and not wussed down. My boys watch the movies on DVD, so I see them from time to time. I see myself with nowhere to go, and it's all rather bland.
Playboy: Do you agree that there were missed opportunities for sex, such as with Halle Berry in Die Another Day?
Brosnan: It would have been great to have sex scenes that were right on the button. I remember doing a sex scene with Halle--I mean frolicking in the bed--and there was director Lee Tamahori right under the sheets with us like some mad Kiwi, saying, "All right, now, where are you going to put your hands? Where are you going to grab her?" I said excitedly, "Is this how you're going to shoot it? Are you going to bring the camera in under the sheets?" If only, man, if only. The way we ended up doing it was almost like the old days in Hollywood: kissing the girl but still having your feet on the floor.
Playboy: Who, for you, is the Bond girl who got away?
Brosnan: Monica Bellucci is a ravishing beauty--a gorgeous, gorgeous woman. She screen-tested to be a Bond girl a while back, and the fools said no. Teri Hatcher stole the day instead. Uma Thurman is another magnificent beauty and a fine actress. We've come around to talking about a sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair. Again it's a love story and a romance, but this time it's not going to be with Rene Russo. So we've been thinking about women, and there are just stunning women out there.
Playboy: You mentioned Teri Hatcher. Purportedly you clashed physically with her during the making of Tomorrow Never Dies. What happened?
Brosnan: The Teri Hatcher incident was blown out of proportion. She was late to the set because she was newly pregnant. I didn't know that until the end of the day.
Playboy: Did you slap her, or did she slap you? Apparently there were hearty cheers from the crew.
Brosnan: She didn't slap me. I didn't slap her. I was vexed because I had a call time of six or seven A.M., and we didn't do any work until three or four in the afternoon. No one told me her situation until afterward. By that time I'd already shot my mouth off and cussed and moaned and groaned. That's all it was, a storm in a teacup.
Playboy: Have you ever been tough to deal with on the set?
Brosnan: I don't think so. Not consistently. I have my days, and as I get older I have more days. You bark or you snap at times. But ultimately I've tried to please, which is one of my downfalls and weaknesses. I try to please them, to be liked, accepted. I've never had unpleasantness with anyone. I don't allow it to happen. I'd rather nip it in the bud. That stuff usually comes from insecurity. You just let it rage, burn out. And you kill it with kindness, talk to it, try to understand it, then leave it alone.
Playboy: How about George Lazenby, who played 007 in On Her Majesty's Secret Service? He once said about you, "If he walked into a room, I doubt anyone would look up. But this is the 1990s, and women want a man who shows his feminine side. Pierce definitely has that."
Brosnan: George is just an angry, old, pissed-off guy. He was never an actor but some pissed-off Aussie who doesn't know how to show his feminine side. I met him, and he's got that kind of brittle edge to him. People want to take swipes. I have no idea why.
Playboy: Whom would you choose as the next 007?
Brosnan: Clive Owen would have been a very strong contender. He's a good actor, but why would he want to do it? He has a glorious career going. He's done some very fine work and survived King Arthur.
Playboy: In your new movie, The Matador, you play a hilariously troubled hit man who hooks up with a beaten-down businessman in a Mexico City bar. In some ways, do you view the character as an antidote to James Bond?
Brosnan: When the [censored]ers try to hem you in with Bond, it's great to come back with The Matador. It's great to say, "
you,
.
you, who wouldn't give me a job.
you, who thought I was some wuss.
you, who thought I was a pretty boy.
you, who thought anything of me without even knowing me or giving me the chance.
you." But if you go around with all that inside you all the time, you end up completely mangled, so you have to let it go.
Playboy: In the movie you strut around swilling beer in nothing but a Speedo and boots. You look like a rock star gone to hell. You're funny but also desperate and sad.
Brosnan: This script just made me howl because it's so over-the-top outrageous. The way I'm perceived, the box I find myself in--the corner into which I've painted myself--made it seem like a great idea. The character is a sad [censored]up of a fellow who has just shagged his way through life. He loves to blow the
out of people and is paid good money to do it. But he's just a lonely guy and a great vulgarian.
Playboy: In one scene, you borrow nail polish from a woman you've just had sex with and paint your toenails black. How strange was that?
Brosnan: I just thought it was a great image. It's never explained. Does he do that all the time, or has he done it before? He's slightly mental. The writing was so clever and snappy. It was great because it wasn't tailored to me. If you have too many things tailored to you, you don't have any room to grow as an actor. You just play it safe the whole time instead of playing a character.
Playboy: Did you ever worry that you were going too far with it?
Brosnan: I actually got cold feet about the whole thing and said, "I can't do it. It's just too out there," because of the sexuality and some of the stuff that would be coming out of my mouth. I like the ambiguity of not knowing which way he swings. He likes the whole world--pussy,
![[censored]](https://debrief.commanderbond.net/topic/26734-brosnans-playboy-interview/style_emoticons/default/censored.gif)
s, animals, you name it--but some of the references in the script made me think, You know, you don't want to turn the audience off. You want them to have sympathy for this character. So we toned it down.
Playboy: Even toned down, you're probably going to freak out your fans who think of you only as the debonair Bond.
Brosnan: [Laughs] Yeah. And I grew this strange kind of Village People mustache and had this buzzed haircut. When I did the scene walking through the hotel in a Speedo and boots, with the gut hanging out, the skinny legs and
, smoking a cigarette and drinking a Heineken, it was like, "
you, Brosnan.
you to everything." When you get to play like that in a piece like this, it's not as if you're bulletproof or anything, but I have nothing to lose by doing it.
Playboy: You not only act in this movie but also your company produced it. Are you worried about how big an audience it will attract?
Brosnan: I would like to see this film be a glorious poke in the eye to certain parties and to be a success and to have other glorious roles follow in its wake. If Fantastic Four and superhero movies are what people go to see, maybe it won't be in that league. But I think there's an audience out there for this--grown-ups who want to listen to good, twisted dialogue and watch nuance. The ones who are switched on and have their finger on the pulse will get it and will love seeing me revel in it. It would also be nice if we and others make our money back. But The Matador is a delightful jolt. I was able to give a performance that hasn't been requested of me all that often. I look a certain way and stand, walk and sound a certain way. I always saw myself as a character actor, but early on somebody told me I was a leading man. I believed him and went that route. But having been trained as an actor to play character, I was led to believe that I had more than one character in me.
Playboy: Your performance in the movie makes us wonder where the edgy, funny, twisted madman has been hiding all these years.
Brosnan: Yeah, I'm generally pretty guarded and cautious--too much so at times. I think it comes mostly from sitting on fear. You become cautious at times, and sometimes you stop believing in yourself. I've looked at it from that perspective. I've also looked at it from the perspective of pure laziness, that I've kind of gotten by and had the luck of the Irish. A lot of it, though, is probably from having dealt with that little knuckle of fear in my life since my childhood.
Playboy: Were you a cool kid, or were you mocked and teased?
Brosnan: Oh, let's not start talking about the mockery. I had my share of mockery, that's for sure. That's a painful one. I didn't really have it until I went from Ireland to London. I had grown up with my mother in the Irish countryside on the river Boyne, which back in the early 1950s was quite lush and remote and tranquil. In London, when I rejoined my mother in 1964 after she'd gone away to school, suddenly I was the true fish out of water. I was the token Paddy in this large school in Putney, South London. It was the first sting, the first whiplash of being in a strange land.
Playboy: Was the sting mostly verbal, or did it get physical?
Brosnan: It started verbally because of my not knowing the language in some respects and also with the deep realization that I was lacking education. I couldn't read or write at the age of 11 when I came from Ireland. I was really backward. I had been in England only a week, and the first morning, my mother dropped me off at this enormous comprehensive school of 2,000 kids with all the grades massed together. I had to stand up in class and name my section. Mine was called 30-A. When I stood up, with my Irish accent I said, "Tirty-A." There were peals of laughter. Then the young chap who sat beside me proceeded to call me Irish because he couldn't or didn't want to say Pierce.
Playboy: Did the nickname Irish stick?
Brosnan: That and Spastic, a name I also got my first day in school. When the day ended and my mother asked, "How was it?" I said, "They laughed at me when I said 'Tirty-A.' She had to tell me how to pronounce it th. And I told her I had a new nickname, Spastic, and I hadn't even known what it meant.
Playboy: Did you ever fight back?
Brosnan: By the end of the first week or so I had my first crush on a girl. She liked me back, but nothing happened. One day the guy who called me Spastic started to mock this girl. I beat the snot out of him. I ended up going to the housemaster and getting caned. It got me accepted into the clan. So my education was not the greatest. It was mainly about mockery, fighting and using humor to find my way out. The name Irish became an emblem I wore. I thought, Well, I am Irish, and I'm the only Irish kid in this school. So that was that.
Playboy: What other survival tools did you use?
Brosnan: A lot of self-deprecating humor. I took what could have been an ugly moment--maybe having to get into a fight--and found a release valve with humor. I also mastered the art of dissembling, disguising who you are and learning how to blend in. I picked up the Cockney accent fairly quickly to survive.
Playboy: Your father left when you were an infant. Next, your young mother left for London, and you stayed with your grandparents in Ireland. When they died you were raised by various relatives. It can't have been all that easy.
Brosnan: When in the past I've talked about my childhood, people have made it sound extremely bleak and desolate. Written on the page, it is. But within it I had a wonderful sense of myself and being on my own adventure, because I knew I was definitely on my own.
Playboy: What was the impact of being left on your own at such a young age?
Brosnan: That's hard to talk about. I think there was so much pain and loneliness that I learned to always cut it off pretty quick and bury it. So it's hard to talk about. Certain images come. I don't remember my father, Tom. He left early, bless his heart. I think he had a problem with drinking, because my mother spoke of such things. He was painted in very dark tones, but it was all hush-hush. You never knew what was going on. I mean, even if somebody was having a baby back then, it was always spelled out b-a-b-y. It was as Neanderthal as that. There wasn't much consistency in my life. There was no plateau of comfort, no consistency or trusting of love.
Playboy: What impact did that have?
Brosnan: For me it was always a question of survival.
Playboy: After your father abandoned you, did you get angry at your mother when she left too?
Brosnan: My mother suffered greatly from it. We've made so much peace and had so much good love since then. It took great courage on her behalf to leave, because they would talk down to you publicly from the church pulpits in those days. The 1950s were a brutal time in southern Ireland to be a young woman 20 years of age and have a baby and no husband. The church had a mighty throttlehold on people and their emotions. It was all built on ugly, disgusting fear that came from the most beautiful words of Jesus and the Bible.
Playboy: In the early 1960s you went to a Catholic boys' school in Navan, Ireland run by Christian Brothers.
Brosnan: I could never understand getting the
kicked out of me while trying to say the "Our Father" just because some Christian Brother had a bee in his bonnet that day. I watched another kid who came late to school get thumped up against the door. These men were deeply frustrated. They were sexually repressed--buttoned down, hammered and shackled. Yet other people speak highly of them. I never had any bad sexual encounters. I was never molested. I never knew of any boys who were molested, so I cannot speak of such grave ills against the innocent.
Playboy: Given that repressive environment, when did you first discover sex?
Brosnan: Some Irish go from that sexual repression to violence and drink, while some go to great heights. I left Ireland when I was 11, and at that point I had hardly any sexual understanding of life. I was innocent. Nobody even spoke of where babies come from. I never saw any sexuality at all because I was living with my grandparents and an aunt and uncle, and that was all behind closed doors. I learned it all when I went to England. Before that it never crossed my mind. When you're fearful in life, when you have a childhood like that, when you have such a transient lifestyle at such a young age and a loss--an abandonment or, better word, separation--it closes down a huge part of your growth rhythms, including your sexual awareness. I think it makes sense that it represses the libido, which at that tender age should be blossoming mischievously, curiously and with wild abandon. Once I discovered my dick, however, it was the best thing ever. I have my geography teacher to thank. She wore these beautiful cashmere sweaters and tight skirts. She had blonde bobbed hair, a beautiful
, a beautiful tummy and nice curved thighs. I wasn't quite sure where they all came together, what that meant or what it looked like, so unfortunately it was nothing more than fantasies. But the fantasies were colorful. She brought out the happy smile on my young face, she and Barbara Windsor, the blonde who starred in the Carry On movies in the 1960s. Barbara Windsor's tits--I've always had a soft spot in my heart for them. Ah, yes, Barbara's boobies.
Playboy: Did they remain your templates for sexy women?
Brosnan: That geography teacher did it, really--the tall blonde.
Playboy: Did any other famous blondes attract you?
Brosnan: Jessica Lange. I've always been extremely attracted to her. I just love the way she moves, and she's got a fine body and an even greater talent. I've also always loved brown-eyed girls, like in the Van Morrison song.
Playboy: Did you dress and talk like cool guys from the movies in those days?
Brosnan: Actually the first movie I saw was a James Bond, Goldfinger, in 1964. Before that there wasn't enough money for me to go to the movies. Even then, movies didn't really kick in for me until around Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, so it was Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen. The heat went up a bit then in the culture. That whole era was coming to its apex. I became a mod but a mod without a Vespa. I couldn't afford one. I had a bicycle, but you can't go around dressed like a mod and ride a bicycle.
Playboy: When did you have your first sexual experience?
Brosnan: I was 16 or 17. Up until that point I'd had a girlfriend. Carol was her name--my first love. She was in South London. With her it was just kissing and fondling, discovering breasts and speaking of love on her doorstep and upstairs in her bedroom while her parents were shopping. There was no loss of virginity, just a broken heart and an innocent romance. At that point I used to think sperm had legs--they could crawl up your thigh. With Carol it never went beyond that because there was a dreadful fear of a b-a-b-y, which put the fear of God in me.
Playboy: When did you know that you wanted to act?
Brosnan: I had no idea what I was going to do. My first real job in London after I left school at 15 or 16 was as a trainee commercial artist. I just thought being an artist was a groovy thing to do. Through art I could delve into any pain and put down my anger, frustration and seething resentment of the [censored]ers who had tried to buckle me up and shackle me down. I finally got a job in a tiny studio in Putney. I had a
education but managed to
my way into this studio for some reason. They had about five artists. I got
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