Pierce Brosnan on Visiting the End of the Road with Roman Polanski

Pierce Brosnan has a unique take on the controversy surrounding Roman Polanski. On the one hand, it's to be expected: Having played the deposed British prime minister Adam Lang in Polanski's new thriller The Ghost Writer (opening today in limited release; going wide March 5), Brosnan is a little too close to the man for mere dogma. On the other, his perspective on the director is so refreshingly, infectiously admiring that it transcends judgment -- a bracing tonic in an era when even the whisper of the name "Polanski" can instantly polarize a room. Despite a resume boasting four James Bond films, the global blockbuster Mamma Mia! and his recent reinvention as a sort of burnished indie statesman, by the end of 20 minutes with Brosnan you can't help but wonder if Lang was the role he knows he was born to play. Not that the influential, embattled man under suspicion by everyone from his biographer (Ewan McGregor) to his equally suspicious wife (Olivia Williams) bore any resemblance to himself. But as Brosnan thoughtfully explained this week to Movieline, the timing and meaning of the thing proved an opportunity almost too good -- and maybe even too valuable -- to be true.

How did this project come to you, and how did you determine that Adam Lang was your guy?

I think if Roman Polanski had asked me to do the phone book, I would have said yes. It was Roman Polanski. It all starts and ends with Roman Polanski. The invitation intrigued me to no end. I was in London doing promotion for Mamma Mia!, and I got this call from my agent to go to Paris and meet Roman for lunch. And so I did. By this time I'd read the book and read the screenplay. The invitation was very intriguing. Of course I said, "Yes." My first question to him was, "So am I playing Tony Blair?" He said, "No, no, no, no, you're not playing Tony Blair." And intellectually I knew I wasn't. I knew this was an impressionistic interpretation of Tony Blair.

In what ways did your own perception and feelings toward Blair inform that interpretation?

In very little ways. The overall piece does so much for me as the actor. I do very little to perform like Tony Blair, or to sound like Tony Blair. But all roads lead to that one man -- in the book, in the screenplay, and on the screen -- because of the emblems of weapons of mass destruction or the Iraq War. Then there's the characterization of Ruth Lang and her relationship to Adam Lang. You just see the echoes and similarities of the Blairs. You know as an actor that Robert Harris was good friends with the Blairs. So with all of this information I began to look at it more closely, and it felt almost like Shakespearean tragedy, or Jacobean tragedy -- especially the part of Ruth, who emanates a sort of Lady Macbeth persona.

Robert Harris once explained that all political careers essentially are tragedies -- that they're over very quickly, and after that your life is never the same.

He has such a way with words. Every time we would do press junkets, I'd hear myself as the stuttering actor trying to formulate some intelligent, cohesive answer. But any political questions that came Robert's way were so beautifully handled. Or, if they came to McGregor or Brosnan, we'd always decline to Mr. Robert Harris, erudite fellow that he is.

[Long pause] The irony is that we find ourselves here opening this movie at the Berlinale. On one side of the curtain is Tony Blair and the Chilcot spotlight, and on the other side is Roman Polanski's incarceration. So you have this vortex of life, drama and moviemaking sitting there for the whole world to see. Surely it's a cinematic "what-if" story -- a glorious question, beginning, middle and end. What if a British prime minister was inveigled into the CIA? It's a huge "what if."

The buzz for this film without Polanski around is so strange, the kind of effect we expect from reclusive filmmakers or maybe a posthumous release. Polanski seems like a ghost himself. How might that affect the way people receive The Ghost Writer?

Well, I've only been part of one presentation at Berlin, and that was front-row and center. The world press was there. The press conference was a full-court press. I have never seen the likes of it. Even having played James Bond, in my first introduction to that character all those years ago, I've never seen the likes of what we saw in Berlin. I can only go by the reviews and the reception that have been overtured toward the film, and they've been very positive. And I do believe the film works in the most glorious Polanski way. All the ingredients and life history and force of him as a storyteller and a cinematic director are quivering at full force here.

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