Pierce Brosnan: Unfinished Business

Q: You still have considerable anxiety before this Bond movie comes out, don't you?

A: There's a lot at stake. Either it will be a big fucking hit and I'll get a million scripts that look like Bond or it will be... well, I'll carry on working regardless, in some shape or form.

Q: Aren't you already getting scripts that aren't like Bond?

A: I am. In the last few weeks I've read scripts of a caliber I've never read before. I would have to beg for them, but now they just come across the desk. One hopes lo work with people who are better than you and there's a script of Streisand's sitting up there, and a script of Costner's. It's wonderful. Fuck, finally!

Q: What's the script with Streisand?

A: The Mirror Has Two Faces.

Q: And with Costner?

A: It's a golfing script. Tin Cup. It's good.

Q: Do you have a next picture planned, besides the second Bond?

A: There's a Richard Attenborough project, Grey Owl, based on a true story about an Indian in Canada in 1932. That would be for next year.

Q: Don't you also have another picture in the can, Robinson Crusoe?

A: Yes. I play Crusoe as a Calvinist seeking his God, and into his life comes this savage who he tries to cultivate, manipulate, shame. I did it as a CBS special but after Bond, it became a [theatrical] movie for Miramax. They should have left it alone and let it be a TV movie.

Q: You must have seen a lot of changes in the industry since you began.

A: The 14 years I've lived here, I've watched it change. Money is always involved, but more so now. It's just gotten way out of proportion. The pyrotechnics and special effects are far too much. Simple, human stories seem to be few and far between. I'd like to be able to make one.

Q: Didn't you do that with Mister Johnson?

A: Yes. And if that came into my life a second time, more people would see it.

Q: Wasn't it your late wife, Cassie, who found Mister Johnson for you?

A: She was the one who insisted that I do it. It was in her third year of her illness, where she was going through chemotherapy every couple of weeks, but she said to me, "You must do this film." So I went off to Nigeria for three months. And when I got back she was thinner, paler, but her spirit was there, the light was still in her eyes. She said, "I don't think you should so away again." So I tried to find work here.

Q: How hard was it for you to work as Cassie's condition deteriorated?

A: It was very difficult. Cassie had ovarian cancer for four years.

Q: When did you first discover that she had cancer?

A: Ovarian cancer is very hard to detect. Six months prior to her diagnosis her gynecologist said, "One of your ovaries has slipped, don't worry about it. That's what the pain's about." Six months later it was full-blown ovarian cancer.

Q: I'm married to a woman I'm very close with, and I just can't imagine being without her. How have you not only gone on, but have somehow managed to thrive?

A: I just feel very alive. In losing her, watching a life dwindle down, you could taste life, you could really sense it. Because everything slows down, everything revolved around the house and small accomplishments. And then with her passing and as the pain gets lesser, you realize what you've come through, that you're still breathing, feeling, thinking, making decisions. It's quite euphoric, the feeling. It gives you a great strength.

Q: Is it true you couldn't bring yourself to ever ask her if she was scared?

A: I never did, no.

Q: How scared were you?

A: You're very scared at the beginning, you're terrified, shocked, numb. Then as you go through it and you realize the person is not going to die that night, tomorrow, next week, you pace yourself. It was just a really long good-bye.

Q: You told TV Guide in 1984, "This is a pretty fast town. Some actresses proposition me. I cannot believe the gall of these people." And Cassie said, "These women are horrible." What's it like now for you?

A: Oh, it's good now, I like it. Let's be honest here. I am a single guy.

Q: Still getting propositioned?

A: Every now and then. Not on Sunset Boulevard, though.

Q: Hugh Grant's run-in with the prostitute will be old news when this comes out, but since you brought it up, what did you think of what Grant did?

A: I felt very sorry for him.

Q: Did you understand it?

A: No. I didn't actually. I didn't get what Hugh Grant did. I've had a few sakes in me, driven down Sunset, had wild fantasies--but I didn't pull over and say. "Give me a blow job." If Sean Penn had done it, it would be gone and forgotten, because Sean is out there, on the edge. Hugh Grant had presented himself as a really lovely guy, and people trusted him. Then he pulled over and did it, and there are people out there who made business of him.

Q: There are scribes out there who make business of you, too. You've been linked with Barbara Orbison, model Tatjana Patitz, and Julianne Phillips for a while. Were you serious with any of them?

A: Barbara is a very good friend. Julianne Phillips is lovely, we went out a couple of times.

Q: Who is Keely Shaye-Smith, who you are seeing now?

A: Keely is someone who I've been with for about a year now. We met in Mexico and we've been dating, traveling, seeing the world. She's an environmental journalist. She has won awards for her reporting. She's just produced a show for PBS, and she's got a book publishing deal.

Q: What do the kids think of your dating?

A: Sean is wary of any of them---he's very protective of dad. Charlotte and Christopher are older, wiser. But Sean is the one who says, "Who is this woman in your life? Get rid of her. Don't like her." It becomes a real challenge, because as a man you have desires--and you just can't do it alone. You need comfort.

Q: As Ambassador for Women's Health Issues for The Permanent Charities Committee of the Entertainment Industry, what do you do?

A: I've lent my name to the fight against ovarian and breast cancer as a man. as a celebrity, as an actor, and as someone who has lost his wife. I went to Washington and spoke, using my story juxtaposed beside statistics and the shameful neglect to women's health care.

Q: You've gone through some personal problems yourself. Last year you underwent minor back surgery at Cedars-Sinai. What was wrong?

A: I screwed my back up and had a disc which had to be taken care of before the Bond movie. I was out of the hospital in a day and slipped in the bathroom and sliced the tendon in my finger open. I had to have another operation that night.

Q: You suffered from Bell's palsy 11 years ago, just before going on the "Tonight Show" with Joan Rivers hosting--how scary was that?

A: I thought I was having a stroke. I remember being in the fucking dressing room beforehand doing my tie up. Suddenly my face was half-numb and I couldn't close one eye. Then I felt my arm going numb. Oh jeez, I thought, I'm having a stroke, and just then came, "knock, knock ... ready for you now, Mr. Brosnan." It was not a good evening.

Q: Before you begun Nomads you broke out in hives. Are you high-strung?

A: [laughs] Warning: before you employ this man, make sure he doesn't have Bell's palsy, hives, any back complaints, ingrown toenails, or pinkeye.

Q: We've come all this way, Pierce, without talking about your child-hood, which might in like you break out in hives again. Your father walked out when you were an infant, and your mother left you with her parents when you were three, and didn't take you back until she was remarried and you were eleven. Have you come to grips with the anger you felt toward them?

A: Oh. I had to. It just goes nowhere. The old man, Tom Brosnan. I never knew him. My mother and I now have a good relationship, she's a great friend. There was a lot of pain [but ] we've resolved a lot of things.

Q: What do you remember of those early years in Ireland?

A: I remember being very much a loner. Very solitary childhood. I didn't have the guidance of a mother and father. I remember missing my mother. I used to think she was in the Congo working in this war zone. In reality she was a nurse in London, but I lived in my imagination.

Q: When you finally met your father, you were a TV star, and he came to visit you. Can you describe that meeting?

A: I was in Ireland doing one of the last episodes of "Remington Steele" in '86. He came to the hotel on a Sunday afternoon. I had tea and biscuits ready, and when I opened the door, there he was. Tom. He was a stranger. I expected him to be this very tall man. He was very lively, a wiry bantam cock of a man with great energy. We talked, had a couple of pints of Guinness, he took some photographs, and then he drove off. It was our only con-tact. The ultimate question was, "Why did you abandon me?"--but I never asked.

Q: A producer said that you have a wonderful black Irish side that doesn't get displayed much. Why not?

A: Do I have a black Irish side? Yes, there's a broodiness. I haven't explored it, maybe because I'm scared of it. Maybe because I don't know how to express it.

Q: Maybe James Bond will do it for you.

A: Maybe. People have wanted me in this, let's hope I don't disappoint them.

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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Annette Bening for the December '94 Movieline.

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