Pierce Brosnan

• 1. The Role He Lost

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  Pierce Brosnan once lost the part of James Bond because his television show was too popular to cancel. In 1986, NBC ended his detective series Remington Steele. Then the producers of the Bond films offered him the role of 007. News of the offer lifted the show's ratings so much that the network renewed it. Brosnan's contract required him to return, so the Bond producers had to look elsewhere. He would not make his first Bond film until 1995. Brosnan is an Irish actor, born in 1953, and he eventually played the spy four times. He is also a painter and an environmental campaigner. How did a boy who grew up between Ireland and England become one of cinema's best-known secret agents? What did he do during the long wait? And what happened when the tuxedo finally came off for good?

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• 2. A Solitary Childhood

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  Pierce Brendan Brosnan was born on the 16th of May 1953 in Drogheda, County Louth. He was the only child of May and Thomas Brosnan, a carpenter. Thomas left the family while his son was still an infant. When Pierce was four, his mother moved to London to work as a nurse. His maternal grandparents, Philip and Kathleen Smith, did most of the raising. After they died, he lived with an aunt, then an uncle, and finally in a boarding house run by a woman named Eileen. He also spent 11 years in Navan, County Meath, which he told an interviewer in 1999 he considers his hometown.

  Looking back, Brosnan said, "Childhood was fairly solitary. I never knew my father." He described his mother as very courageous for going to England to nurse, hoping for a better life for them both. She came home only once or twice a year.

  He grew up in a Catholic family, served as an altar boy, and attended a local school run by the De La Salle Brothers. On the 12th of August 1964 he left Ireland for Scotland. There he was reunited with his mother and her new husband, William Carmichael, at their home in Longniddry. The family later moved back to London, where Brosnan attended Elliott School in Putney, now called Ark Putney Academy.

  The move to England was a jolt. "When you go to a very large city, a metropolis like London, as an Irish boy of 10, life suddenly moves pretty fast," he recalled. "And you're Irish. And they make you feel it." He remembered "a certain deep sense of being an outsider." At school, his nickname was simply "Irish".

  Carmichael had already taken the boy to his first James Bond film, Goldfinger, when Brosnan was 11.

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• 3. From Easel to Stage

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  At 16, Brosnan left school, certain that he would be a painter. He began training in commercial illustration at Saint Martin's School of Art in London. Then he attended a workshop rehearsal at the Ovalhouse, where a fire eater was teaching people how to swallow flames. Brosnan joined in. That detour led to three years of acting training at the Drama Centre London. He later described finding acting, or being found by it, as a liberation. "It was a stepping stone into another life, away from a life that I had, and acting was something I was good at, something which was appreciated."

  He graduated in 1975 and took a job as an acting assistant stage manager at the York Theatre Royal. His acting debut there was in Wait Until Dark. Within six months, the playwright Tennessee Williams picked him to play McCabe in the British première of The Red Devil Battery Sign. The billing misspelled his name as "Pierce Brosman".

  The performance caused a stir in London. Williams sent a telegram that said only "Thank God for you, my dear boy", and Brosnan still has it.

  In 1977, Franco Zeffirelli picked him for Filumena, a play by Eduardo De Filippo. His co-stars were Joan Plowright and Frank Finlay.

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• 4. Small Screen Stardom

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  Brosnan's early screen work was modest. He had brief parts in the films The Long Good Friday and The Mirror Crack'd, both released in 1980. On television he turned up in The Professionals, Murphy's Stroke and Play for Today. American viewers first noticed him in the miniseries Manions of America, where he had the leading role.

  In 1982, the BBC aired Nancy Astor, a nine-part miniseries about the first woman to sit in the British Parliament. It also ran in America on Masterpiece Theatre. Brosnan played Robert Gould Shaw II, a part that earned him a 1985 Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

  That same year he moved to Southern California to star in Remington Steele on NBC. The series was a romantic, often comic detective show, and its title role made him popular in the United States. The Washington Post wrote in 1982 that Brosnan "could make it as a young James Bond". The show ran for 94 episodes, until 1987.

  Timothy Dalton got the part Brosnan could not take. Dalton starred in The Living Daylights in 1987 and Licence to Kill in 1989. Brosnan was reluctant to talk about losing the role, partly because Dalton was a friend. Still, Bond kept following him. He appeared in Diet Coke commercials as what the Los Angeles Times called "a dashing Bond-like character". NBC advertised the miniseries Noble House with Brosnan in a Bond-like tuxedo.

  Other work filled the years. He starred beside Michael Caine in The Fourth Protocol, a Cold War thriller from 1987. The Deceivers and the miniseries James Clavell's Noble House followed in 1988, and The Lawnmower Man in 1992. In 1992 he also shot an NBC pilot called Running Wilde, playing a reporter for Auto World magazine, with Jennifer Love Hewitt as his daughter. It never aired.

  Mrs. Doubtfire gave him a supporting role in 1993. Television films kept coming: Victim of Love in 1991, Death Train in 1993 and Night Watch in 1995, a spy thriller set in Hong Kong. That same year brought a very different spy role.

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• 5. Wearing the Tuxedo

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  Albert R. Broccoli, the Bond producer, first met Brosnan on the set of For Your Eyes Only. Brosnan's first wife, Cassandra Harris, played Countess Lisl von Schlaf, mistress to Milos Columbo. Broccoli said of Brosnan, "if he can act... he's my guy" to take over from Roger Moore. Entertainment Tonight and the National Enquirer also reported that Brosnan would inherit Moore's other famous role, Simon Templar in The Saint. Brosnan denied the rumour in July 1993 but added, "it's still languishing there on someone's desk in Hollywood."

  The Bond series itself then stalled. Legal disputes between the producers and the studio over distribution rights cancelled a proposed third Dalton film in 1991. The series went on hiatus for several years. Once the legal issues were resolved, Dalton decided not to return. On the 7th of June 1994, Brosnan was announced as the fifth actor to play Bond.

  He signed a three-film deal with an option for a fourth. GoldenEye, released in 1995, grossed US$350 million worldwide. That made it the fourth-highest earner of its year. Adjusted for inflation, it was the most successful Bond film since Moonraker. It holds 78% on Rotten Tomatoes and 65% on Metacritic. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it three stars out of four. He found Brosnan's Bond "somehow more sensitive, more vulnerable, more psychologically complete" than earlier versions. James Berardinelli called Brosnan "a decided improvement over his immediate predecessor", though he felt about a quarter of the film was padding that killed momentum.

  Tomorrow Never Dies followed in 1997, The World Is Not Enough in 1999 and Die Another Day in 2002. All three drew mixed reviews and succeeded at the box office. Brosnan later criticised many aspects of Die Another Day.

  When he accepted the role, Brosnan asked Eon Productions for permission to work on other projects between Bond films. The producers agreed. For every Bond film, he made at least two other mainstream films, some of which he produced. He played a scientist in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! and the title role in Grey Owl. That film tells the life of Archibald Stansfeld Belaney, one of Canada's first conservationists. In 2001 he starred with Jamie Lee Curtis and Geoffrey Rush in The Tailor of Panama.

  In 1996, Brosnan and his longtime friend Beau St. Clair, an American film producer, founded a production company called Irish DreamTime. Its first production, The Nephew, arrived in 1998. The Thomas Crown Affair followed a year later and met with critical and box office success.

  Bond also reached video games. GoldenEye 007 used his likeness. In 2002, 007: Nightfire put his face on the character while Maxwell Caulfield supplied the voice. For James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing in 2004, Brosnan contracted to provide both his likeness and his voice.

  After Die Another Day, the media asked whether he would play Bond a fifth time. He was nearing 50. Fans and critics had been unhappy with Roger Moore playing the part until 57, but Brosnan was receiving popular support for another film and stayed keen. While promoting the fourth film he said, "I'd like to do another, sure. Connery did six. Six would be a number, then never come back."

  In October 2004, Brosnan said he considered himself dismissed. In February 2005 he posted on his website that he was finished with the role. Daniel Craig took over on the 14th of October 2005. Asked by The Globe and Mail about his successor, Brosnan replied, "Daniel Craig is a great actor and he's going to do a fantastic job."

  He later admitted that the ending hurt. Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson telephoned him. She was crying, and Wilson, in Brosnan's words, was stoic. He told Brosnan, "You were a great James Bond." Brosnan said he was "utterly shocked and just kicked to the kerb with the way it went down."

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• 6. Life After 007

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  Laws of Attraction, released in 2004, was Brosnan's first role after Bond. He played Daniel Rafferty, and Garreth Murphy of entertainment.ie called the performance "surprisingly effective", noting how it gently played off his Bond persona. That year he also starred in After the Sunset with Salma Hayek and Woody Harrelson. Reviews were generally negative, and the film flopped. Since 2004, he has also talked of backing a film about Caitlin Macnamara, wife of the poet Dylan Thomas, with Miranda Richardson in the title role.

  The Matador, in 2005, changed the picture. Brosnan played Julian Noble, a jaded, neurotic assassin who meets a travelling salesman, played by Greg Kinnear, in a Mexican bar. Reviews were generally positive, and Roger Ebert called it the best performance of Brosnan's career. It earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy. Joaquin Phoenix won for Walk the Line. In 2006, Brosnan narrated the official film of the FIFA World Cup, directed by Michael Apted.

  Seraphim Falls, in 2007, paired him with fellow Irishman Liam Neeson. Kevin Crust of the Los Angeles Times thought they made "fine adversaries". Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter felt they struggled to bring life to their sparse lines.

  The 2008 film of the ABBA musical Mamma Mia! cast him as Sam Carmichael, one of three men who might be the father of Sophie, played by Amanda Seyfried. Meryl Streep played Sophie's mother. Producer Judy Craymer said, "Pierce brings a certain smooch factor, and we think he'll have great chemistry with Meryl in a romantic comedy." To prepare, Brosnan spent about six weeks walking up and down the coast and singing karaoke to his own voice. Rehearsals in New York, he noted, "sounded dreadful". Critics generally disparaged his singing, comparing it in separate reviews to a water buffalo, a donkey and a wounded raccoon. He returned as Sam Carmichael for the 2018 sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.

  In 2008 he was also a guest narrator for the Thomas and Friends film The Great Discovery. He had been set to narrate UK and US versions from Series 12 to Series 16. The production studio dismissed him after finding his recordings "weird" and "unacceptable".

  Roman Polanski's 2010 political thriller The Ghost Writer gave Brosnan the part of a disgraced British prime minister. The film won a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. The same year he played Chiron in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Charles Hawkins in Remember Me.

  Not every project arrived. The November Man cast him as a retired CIA operative named Devereaux. It spent almost a decade in development limbo before its 2014 release, then drew poor reviews, with 34% on Rotten Tomatoes and 38 out of 100 on Metacritic. Last Man Out, a crime film, never came to fruition after years in development, and Brosnan is no longer attached. A film of Ernest Hemingway's novel Across the River and into the Trees would have reunited him with director Martin Campbell. Investors hesitated and delays piled up, so both men dropped out, and Liev Schreiber took the lead.

  Campbell did direct him in The Foreigner in 2017, opposite Jackie Chan. Brosnan played Liam Hennessy, a former IRA man turned government official, and observers noted his resemblance to the Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams. That year he also replaced Sam Neill as Eli McCullough in the television adaptation of Philipp Meyer's novel The Son, which ran for two seasons until 2019.

  Later work includes Kent Nelson, also known as Doctor Fate, in the 2022 film Black Adam. In 2023 he played King Louis XIV in The King's Daughter and led the hitman thriller Fast Charlie, directed by Phillip Noyce. In 2025 he played Ron in the film of The Thursday Murder Club. He also appeared as Conrad Harrigan across ten episodes of MobLand.

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• 7. Brush and Banner

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  Brosnan has been an Ambassador for UNICEF Ireland since 2001. He followed Roger Moore, who served as a Goodwill Ambassador from 1991 until his death in 2017. Brosnan joined Liam Neeson in recording an announcement for the launch of UNICEF's "Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS" campaign. He supported John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election and is a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage.

  His concern about nuclear weapons dates to 1962, when he was nine. Worldwide condemnation of American nuclear testing in Nevada was making international headlines. In the 1990s he took part in news conferences in Washington, D.C., to help Greenpeace press for a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. He also boycotted the French premiere of GoldenEye to back Greenpeace's protest against French nuclear testing.

  From 1997 to 2000, Brosnan and his wife, Keely Shaye Smith, worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Their aim was to stop a proposed salt factory at Laguna San Ignacio. The couple, together with Halle Berry, Cindy Crawford and Daryl Hannah, also fought the Cabrillo Port Liquefied Natural Gas facility proposed off the coast of Malibu. The State Lands Commission denied the lease, and in May 2007 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the facility.

  In May 2007, the couple donated $100,000 to replace a playground on Kauai, the Hawaiian island where they own a house. On the 7th of July 2007, Brosnan presented a film at Live Earth in London and recorded a television advertisement for the cause. He sits on the Board of Advisors of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. In 2004, the Sustainable Style Foundation named him "Best-dressed Environmentalist".

  Art came before acting for Brosnan. "I always wanted to be an artist, a painter," he said. "I started as a Trainee Artist in a small studio in South London." A colleague suggested he attend a theatre workshop, and he eventually abandoned art for acting.

  He took up painting again in the late 1980s, during his first wife's illness, because he found it therapeutic. "From a very hard time in my life, I started painting again and out came every colour I could imagine," he said. He names Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard and Kandinsky as influences and calls himself self-taught, "an enthusiastic painter as a friend of mine likes to say." Profits from giclée prints of his work go to a trust for "environmental, children's and women's health charities".

  In 2021 he launched his first NFT collection of digital artworks, called "Big Noise". It was inspired by his painting Earplugs, which he painted while filming GoldenEye. The work incorporates abstract movement, self-recorded sound including his own voice, and bespoke visuals.

  In 2006, Brosnan served as spokesperson for Lee National Denim Day, a breast cancer fundraiser. It raises millions of dollars and brings in more money in a single day than any other breast cancer fundraiser.

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• 8. Family and Loss

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  Brosnan has married twice, been widowed once, and has five children and four grandchildren. He met the Australian actress Cassandra Harris through David Harris, the younger brother of Richard Harris, shortly after leaving drama school. "What a beautiful-looking woman," he recalled. "I never for an instant thought she was someone I'd spend 17 years of my life with." They began dating and bought a house in Wimbledon. They married in December 1980.

  Their son Sean was born on the 13th of September 1983 and later became an actor. The couple also raised Harris's two children from her earlier marriage, Charlotte and Chris. Brosnan adopted them after their father, Dermot Harris, died in 1986, and they took his surname. Money was a worry early on. Brosnan worked in West End plays and television films, and the couple took out a bank loan after Harris appeared in For Your Eyes Only. The Remington Steele role later eased their financial worries.

  An episode of Remington Steele filmed in Ireland drew significant publicity. It led to a meeting with the father who had left when Brosnan was an infant. They met at Brosnan's hotel. He had expected a very tall man. Instead he saw "a man of medium stature, pushed-back silver hair, flinty eyes, and a twizzled jaw" with "a very strong Kerry accent". He regretted that the reunion happened so publicly and wished for something more private.

  While Brosnan filmed The Deceivers in Rajasthan in 1987, Harris became seriously ill. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and died on the 28th of December 1991. Brosnan struggled to cope. "Because you're dealing with death," he said of her illness, "you're dealing with the possibility of death and dying." He remembered her as having "the most amazing energy and outlook on life" and said he sees the loss reflected in his children. Harris had always wanted him to play James Bond. In 1995, four years after her death, he secured the role. His adopted daughter Charlotte also died of ovarian cancer, on the 28th of June 2013.

  In 1994, Brosnan met the American journalist Keely Shaye Smith in Mexico. They married in 2001 at Ballintubber Abbey in Ireland and have two sons, Dylan and Paris. They live mainly in Malibu, California, with a second American home in Hawaii, and Brosnan has no permanent residence in Ireland. On the 11th of February 2015, a fire damaged their $18 million Malibu home. Firefighters needed 30 minutes to put it out. Flames destroyed the contents of the garage, including his 2002 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish, and reached a bedroom above. Nobody was hurt, and the damage came to $1 million.

  In July 2003, Queen Elizabeth II made him an Honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his outstanding contribution to the British film industry. As an Irish citizen he can only be an honorary appointee, but he may still use the letters OBE. The Irish Film and Television Academy gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. He also received honorary degrees from the Dublin Institute of Technology in 2002 and University College Cork a year later.

  On the 23rd of September 2004, he became an American citizen while keeping his Irish citizenship. "My Irishness is in everything I do," he said. "It's the spirit of who I am, as a man, an actor, a father." He is amused when people mistake him for an Englishman because of his fairly neutral accent.

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