Golden high! As Goldeneye is given a very welcome and special 30th anniversary release in UK cinemas, the JBIFC takes the opportunity to look back at an interview Pierce Brosnan gave in 2017, which dealt partly with his debut as 007.
Back in June, 2017, the popular British movie magazine Total Film (now sadly defunct) carried an interview with former four-times James Bond actor Brosnan, in which he offered some interesting reflections on his 007 films, as well as his thoughts on some of the other key movies he had made in his wide-ranging career as an actor.
The magazine reminisced with Brosnan on his experiences in studios, on location, and on some of the ‘tricks’ of the trade. Speaking to the magazine as part of the tie-in publicity campaign for what was then his exciting new 10-part TV series The Son, Pierce took Total Film‘s readers through his impressive resume and commented on some of the highs and lows of his long and diverse career in cinema.
At that stage, this was a career on screen which, in addition to his four smash-hit 007 movies, had also included films such as the classic gangster movie The Long Good Friday (1980) (his first role in a big cinema film), the high-class crime thriller The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), the espionage film The Tailor of Panama (2001), the musical Mamma Mia! (2008), and the political thriller The Ghost (2010).
Bond… James Bond
In relation to his debut 007 movie Goldeneye (1995), which now has legions of fans, Brosnan told the magazine that prior to this he had been ‘a huge fan of the character and the franchise’, and they had been a part of his growth as an actor – he had seen the baton passed from Sean Connery to Roger Moore and: ‘I was a fan of both of their styles of acting, so, for me, it was trying to ride both horses, really’. Pierce explained that he tried to bring the ‘Connery gravitas’ to the role mixed in with ‘the light touch of Roger Moore’.
He added that, for Goldeneye, he wanted to keep both of the two men’s spirits within his own interpretation of Bond, but also eventually came at it with his own rhythm and sense of timing. He also paid tribute to Goldeneye’s director, the hard-working New Zealander Martin Campbell, who, Pierce said, was his mentor and ‘kept my spirits alive’, giving him the courage to go out there and play the role: ‘We remain good friends’.
Bonded to James
There were some other gems in the Total Film interview. Concerning his final James Bond movie, Die Another Day (2002), Pierce told Total Film that he was ‘very comfortable in the role by then. I had a confidence as to what was required of me’. On the other hand, he had developed ‘a certain frustration’ as the films had gone on: ‘I wanted Bond to get a little more gritty and real and down and dirty, but however you try to nurse it along, the scripts would come along with the same outlandish scenarios. So you go with the flow’. He added that he still had a ‘great time’ on Die Another Day, even though there were things in the script that were ‘so ridiculous’, such as the invisible car.
Many of Brosnan’s fans still believe that it is a great pity the actor was never given the opportunity to make a fifth James Bond movie, and Pierce himself has made it clear in numerous subsequent interviews that he would have relished a fifth stab at the iconic character; indeed, he had been told he would return and had expected it be his final entry in the role. Moreover, given that some of the more outlandish aspects of his fourth turn as Bond had divided both fans and critics alike, he had hoped that a fifth Bond movie would have returned 007 back to the gritty and action-dominated nature of Goldeneye, a movie that seemed to get the balance just right between Bond thriller and escapist adventure.`
And Pierce Brosnan was undoubtedly a huge contributor to the success of Goldeneye. As Martin Campbell himself put it in in 1995: ‘Once Pierce Brosnan was on board I felt that we could get on with delivering a great Bond movie. Pierce is absolutely right: the perfect 007. Born to play him, if you like, in the sense that he lights up the screen with a winning mixture of action, humour and romance. He’s also a damned good actor and knows exactly wgat he’s doing’.
Did You Know?
When Brosnan’s first wife, the late Cassandra Harris, was interviewed live on stage at the JBIFC’s second fan convention, held in 1981 at the Wembley conference centre, where she talked about her role in the new 007 movie For Your Eyes Only, her husband – a certain Mr. Pierce Brosnan, then a relatively unknown actor – sat quietly at the back of the auditorium looking after their children, mainly unnoticed by the audience whose attention was fixed solely on the lovely actress speaking on the stage. If only we had known then what lay ahead in Pierce’s future!
FYEO actress Cassandra Harris with husband Pierce