Former 'smooth git' Pierce Brosnan tells Louise East why he's happy to be cast against type in his new film
The opening scene of Pierce Brosnan's new film, The Matador, induces a strong sense of deja vu. Brosnan wakes amid rumpled sheets, a raised eyebrow letting us know this is not his hotel room. Sure enough, just over his right shoulder is the smooth brown back of a slumbering lovely. So far, so familiar for the man commonly regarded as one of the best James Bonds.
But before the 007 theme music can kick in, Brosnan's gaze falls on his latest conquest's blueberry-painted toenails. Without pausing to adjust his strategically-placed sheet, he scoots out of bed, finds her bottle of polish and, with a crow of contentment, settles down to paint his own.
Welcome to the world of Julian Noble, a foul-mouthed, tequila-soaked hit man who, as he gets older, is increasingly troubled by nasty attacks of conscience. Over the next two hours, The Matador boasts enough explosions to rival any of Bond's missions, but it isn't Blofeld's secret base that's disappearing in a cloud of smoke, it's the 007 iconography.
As Noble, Brosnan curses at children, drunkenly makes a pass at Greg Kinnear's hapless salesman, leers at schoolgirls and daubs his nose with iridescent white sunblock. Gone are the suave double entendres, replaced by extravagantly humorous similes such as: "I'm as tired as a Bangkok hooker on the Sunday morning after the navy leaves town."
Noble is neurotic, needy and, says Brosnan, with great satisfaction, totally filthy. "And I'm totally aware of the effect of that coming out of my mouth after . . ." He trails off, and for a moment it looks as if this interview is going to be tricky. Should Brosnan decide to play it safe in a notoriously precarious industry, he might refuse to talk about his 10 years as the world's most famous secret agent. Or perhaps he's simply touchy, given that he was sacked from the job in 2004 with a single phone call, despite the €3 billion his four Bond films brought in. Luckily, Brosnan is pausing only to savour his words more fully.
"I'm fully aware that this film totally deconstructs the image I've created of myself. I painted myself into a corner with Bond. It wasn't a bad corner to be in, by any stretch of the imagination, and I could probably have made a career out of carrying on being professionally smooth. But, you know, you look around and you realise you've created a look for yourself, an image. It kind of gets boring." He leans forward, suddenly animated. "I was getting bored with myself."
Boring or not, when Brosnan arrived for our talk he definitely looked more James Bond than Julian Noble. Tall, at 188cm (6ft 2in), the 52-year-old actor is wearing a brown suede jacket, black open-neck shirt and jeans, and cowboy boots. He has a deep tan, courtesy of living in Malibu for the past 20-odd years, but is sprinkled with the freckles he owes to his Navan roots. This is the visual equivalent of his accent, which hovers 500 miles west of Galway, on the Hollywood isle of Midatlantica.
Ironically, when he was called on to deliver an Irish accent in 2002's Evelyn, Brosnan came up with an odd hash of Gilligan's Island and Ryan's Daughter, yet when he talks about his latest project, Seraphim Falls, he lapses into a convincing faux de Valera accent to send up the idea that he and Liam Neeson, his co-star, might play cowboys, in the Brokeback Mountain mould. "We don't go camping. There's none of that. Liam. And. I. Do. Not. Do. That."
Yet perhaps Brosnan's elusive Irish accent is no surprise, given what he has described as his "mangled and strange" childhood. Brosnan's father left home when Brosnan was a baby, and by the time he was four his mother had moved to London to find work, leaving him with his grandparents. When they, too, died, Brosnan was shuttled between relatives and boarding houses, enduring a harsh Christian Brothers education, before his mother finally sent for him at the age of 11.
Despite its complexities, Brosnan is proud of his heritage. When he married for the second time, to the journalist Keely Shaye Smith, in 2001, he did so at Ballintubber Abbey, in Co Mayo. More recently, he brought their two sons, nine-year-old Dylan Thomas and five-year-old Paris Beckett, back to Boyne Crescent in Navan, where he photographed them in the small rockery where his First Communion photograph was taken.
"I think I'm very Irish. I'm passionate, and the daftest things come out of my mouth, because I speak before I think. I love people, and I think I travel well, which is a very Irish trait."
Ireland has returned the compliment, bestowing on Brosnan two honorary doctorates; Britain also claimed him as its own with an honorary OBE, and the US offered citizenship in 2004.
Brosnan became the subject of huge goodwill after his first wife, Cassandra Harris, died in his arms the day after their 11th wedding anniversary, following a four-year battle with cancer. Her death, in 1991, left Brosnan, at 38, a widower and the father of three young children: Christopher and Charlotte, Harris's children from her first marriage, whom Brosnan later adopted; and Sean, their son together.
The children have not always had an easy ride, with Christopher in and out of prison and rehabilitation for drugs and drink-driving offences and Sean involved in a near-fatal car crash in 2001. All this makes it particularly poignant that Brosnan frequently calls himself lucky.
Does he really consider himself a lucky man? "Yup," he says, reaching to knock a wooden table leg. "I've had good fortune, I've worked hard and passionately and, luckily, I love what I do. I try to educate my children in the same breath: find something that you are passionate about. It's not easy, but it's certainly doable."
In many ways, Bond was a role Brosnan was born to play; Goldfinger was his favourite film as a boy, his first wife was a Bond girl (she played Countess Lisl von Schlaf in For Your Eyes Only) and he looked the part. Yet the first time he was offered the role, in 1986, he had to turn it down, as he was still under contract to the makers of Remington Steele, the cheesily loveable 1980s television series.
Timothy Dalton got the job instead, and Brosnan did not slip on the tuxedo until 1995, when the franchise was in crisis. His first outing, GoldenEye, changed all that, taking more than €300 million at the box office and confirming Brosnan as worthy successor to Sean Connery and Roger Moore.
"It's a bit like being an ambassador to a small country, that character," he says. "There's a sense of this cinematic legacy that you're part of, that you had a great fondness for. I wanted do the best job possible."
Yet Brosnan never tried to disguise his frustration with the role, describing it as "a straitjacket" and a "period piece" full of "crass one-liners", even though he acknowledges the opportunities it gave him. "I knew I was in the process of creating an international profile for myself, with Bond as a calling card. What do you do after that?"
In a pre-emptive strike, Brosnan formed a film company, Irish DreamTime, and co-produced films such as The Thomas Crown Affair, Evelyn and, now, The Matador. "It was about me having choices. If someone else had been making The Matador, I don't think I'd have been their first choice."
Perhaps not, but when Brosnan read the script, which was initially submitted by the film's writer and director, Richard Shepard, as a writing sample, he knew it was for him. "I just loved it. I thought it was dark, funny, kaleidoscopic. It had this huge vulgar way about it, and yet a tender side, too."
For Shepard, an indie film-maker who envisaged making The Matador on a budget of little more than €200,000, Brosnan's involvement meant a significant upgrade, to a budget of €8.5 million and a 40-day shoot in Mexico. Yet far from being overawed, Shepard exploited the comic potential of portraying the artist formerly known as Bond in the middle of a psychopathic nervous breakdown. In one scene, Brosnan marchesacross a crowded hotel lobby wearing nothing but cowboy boots, a cigar and a pair of black briefs pulled up as high as a sagging pot belly will allow. It is not a scene for the pathologically vain, but Brosnan smiles happily.
"I thought that was rather clever of Richard. He was looking for a simple transitional scene, but you get a much bigger bang for your buck when you see me, who's always been Mr Elegant, walking across a hotel lobby in my knickers. It works for the character of Julian Noble, and it worked for Pierce Brosnan the actor."
The film did well in the US, earning Brosnan a Golden Globe nomination, and Brosnan clearly hopes it will open up new roles. "This has given me confidence to know that I'm going in the right direction and that I can play characters as opposed to being a smooth git."
So what's the next challenge? He thinks for a long time, then laughs. "I'm trying to think of some profound answer, but really I just want to act. I want to stay at the table for as long as I can, work with the best people and make more movies. It's pretty simple."
The Matador is in cinemas now