Pierce Brosnan: Unfinished Business

Q: You felt you were selling out doing TV. Why were movies so important to you?

A: There's a great magic to them. Simple as that. And I wanted to be part of that magic.

Q: You told me that "Steele" was the most stressful job you'd ever had. Did some of that stem from the jealousy that existed between Stephanie Zimbalist and yourself?

A: Yeah. There was never an open animosity between us, though--it was never a set like "Moonlighting," where Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd were at each other's throats, if you believe everything you read.

Q: The stories from the '80s call you a hunk, but you didn't see yourself that way.

A: It pissed me off being called a hunk. I just took it as a joke, really.

Q: In People you said, "I don't think anyone is going to ask me to take off my shirt." And yet for years afterwards, there were pictures of you with your shirt unbuttoned to the navel.

A: I was being a flirt.

Q: You put out a poster of yourself, then wondered in print whether Robert De Niro would ever do that. Why would you do it and then have such anxiety about it?

A: I wanted to be somebody else. I wanted to have another career. Then I thought to myself, "Shut the fuck up and just be yourself, be happy with what you've got." I got that out of my system. I don't mind taking my shirt off--if it serves the god-damn movie, I'll show the pecs.

Q: Two years ago you lamented that you hadn't made it fully yet. Still feel that way?

A: I haven't made it. When I first became an actor. I felt I wasn't good enough, and there is that stigma still. I still have that desire to be up there in a film which is big and successful and will have a life many years on.

Q: Have you reflected at all on why it took The Lawnmower Man, a sci-fi thriller, for you to have your first movie hit?

A: The Lawnmower Man came at a time when people were just beginning to hear about virtual reality. It came out at the right time. They've made a sequel, but I was involved with the Bond film.

Q: Are you sorry about that?

A: One was enough.

Q: Until Bond, really, you seemed to have the bad luck of working with good people on projects that didn't quite make it: John McTiernan [Nomads], Nicholas Meyer and Ismail Merchant [The Deceivers], Bruce Beresford [Mister Johnson], Warren Beatty and Glenn Gordon Caron [Love Affair], Michael Caine [The Fourth Protocol]. Can you talk about those projects?

A: I don't see them as failures. I mean. The Fourth Protocol and Mister Johnson weren't box-office hits, but they were successes for me. Mister Johnson is very close to my heart. Bruce Beresford gave me confidence and direction. Nomads didn't do any-thing for me. but it did for John McTiernan. Why didn't it work for me? My beard. I should have gone for a sleeker, more cosmetic image.

Q: How about Love Affair?

A: Too long. Warren [Beatty] got involved too much. He's an incredibly talented man; when he gets it right, it's brilliant. But his new life with Annette [Bening] and fatherhood and his own obsessiveness about movie-making tripped him up on Love Affair. It's a shame because if he just had entrusted the director and the people he brought on board, it might have had more of a leanness to it.

Q: What was it like on that set?

A: After the first day, I thought I was going to get the pink slip. It was a very simple scene at a playhouse with Annette and myself listening to Ray Charles. Glenn [Gordon Caron] directed it tine way, and then Warren came and said do it another way, and then [cinematographer] Conrad Hall had his interpretation. We went for take after take after lake, and I began to feel a little insecure and paranoid. It's hard working like that, it's hard getting it up all those times.

Q: You were in a very big hit, Mrs. Doubtfire, but your role was considered by some as window dressing for Robin Williams's antic. Was it at all frustrating for you?

A: No. I never see myself as window dressing. I really liked my character, a smart businessman who had let this woman get away, and this was his second chance. That's what the movie was about: me. It happened to be starring Robin Williams and Sally Field, but that was my mind set.

Q: Who are the actors you most admire?

A: There's Brando, De Niro, Pacino, Gene Hackman, Spencer Tracy--and Cary Grant.

Q: Ten years ago you said you felt De Niro had become the Brando of his generation. Still feel that way about him?

A: De Niro's changed. He's still got a brilliant light, but he hasn't found vehicles which let him shine; in a big way, in a star way.

Q: Let's go back to the beginning of your own career. Your big break came when you appeared in a Tennessee Williams play, Red Devil Battery Sign. Did you get to know Williams?

A: I met him. He was quiet, but he had a glint in his eye. He sent me a telegram on the first night saying, "Thank God for you, my dear boy. Love, Tennessee."

Q: Knowing of Wiiliams's fondness for handsome men, how did you take that?

A: I took it in every way, including that I was just such a brilliant actor. I knew about Tennessee Williams and his love affairs. I know a lot of gay people and they're wonderful people. I have no fear about somebody coming on to me. I just say, "Look, sorry buddy, I'm not into that."

Q: Franco Zeffirelli saw you in the Williams play and cast you in Filumena. Laurence Olivier's wife, Joan Plowright, was cast as your mother in that play. She invited you home to dinner, didn't she?

A: Yes, we had dinner with Sir Laurence at their house in Brighton. He had orange Day-Glo socks on and Hush Puppies. He talked about Hollywood, and about Noel Coward. We walked around his garden, where he'd spent six months trying to lower his voice an octave for Othello. I have a tendency to get extremely shy, which can be misconstrued for arrogance, but I just didn't know what to say. I was in awe of the man.

Q: If you could have lunch with Olivier again, what would you ask now?

A: I'd ask, "Why didn't you make it in movies? Why were you so powerful onstage and [such an acquired taste] on the screen?" This great stage actor didn't really shine on-screen.

Q: So much for Wuthering Heights, The Entertainer and Marathon Man.

A: True, The Entertainer was brilliant. Marathon Man came later in his life.

[The phone rings. Pierce waits for some-one in the house to answer, but it keeps ringing. He picks it up, says he's doing this inter-view and promises to call back.]

I hate phones ringing. I always have to answer. What does that mean about me? It's like. Oh, this could be another job--you know. the one that's going to turn my life around. Old habits die hard.

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