‘I was in awe’ – Pierce Brosnan on which fellow James Bond star was his ‘hero’ | Films | Entertainment
Pierce Brosnan fans can catch a double bill of his James Bond movies this weekend on ITV, starting with The World Is Not Enough on Saturday, followed by Die Another Day on Sunday.
The 70-year-old star’s latest film, action-comedy The Out-Laws, also just dropped on Netflix.
The actor, of course, remains best known as 007 and revealed that his love for the iconic spy films started when he was a little boy.
He even queued for an autograph from a James Bond legend and later described the star’s incredibly touching visit when he took over the role himself decades later.
Brosnan was cruelly denied his first chance to play Bond in 1986. He had been waiting five years already after producer Cubby Broccoli spotted him when he visited his then-wife Cassandra Harris, who had been cast as Countess Lisl von Schlaf in 1981’s For Your Eyes Only.
Brosnan was a complete unknown at the time, although that would not last. Broccoli knew he had found his next 007, but in 1983 Brosnan found fame in TV show Remington Steele. When it was cancelled in 1986, the Bond role was offered, but suddenly the TV producers renewed the show and the Irish star was trapped by his contract.
It had been his dream, almost since he first saw Connery in Goldfinger as a 12-year-old in 1964. Obsessed with the Bond films, he could not afford to go to the cinema but discovered Roger Moore as The Saint on television.
That same year he actually met Roger Moore as a little boy: “I guess the combination of Bond and the Saint ignited a flame for fame in my heart of innocent wonder. I wanted to be up there. Roger as the Saint made me believe in his world. And before I knew it, the man who was the Saint transformed into James Bond, an even greater hero to me as a boy.
” I guess I slowly dreamt of being an actor as I watched their work, which never really seemed like work to me. Of course, I was only 12 years old. Only now after 40 years as an actor do I know the hard road it takes to be one. It’s only now, after all these years, that I know he was a hero.
“He is the only actor I ever asked for an autograph. I was 12 years old, and my mom and dad had taken me to Battersea Park. I lined up by the Ferris wheel and waited my turn to get his autograph. I wanted to be somebody like him.”
Brosnan’s time finally came in 1995’s GoldenEye and he received a very special blessing: “Roger came down to set one day on GoldenEye and wished me well. I was still in awe of the man.”
When Moore died in 2017, Brosnan penned a personal and deeply moving tribute in Variety: “Only now after 40 years as an actor do I know the hard road it takes to be one. It’s only now, after all these years, that I know he was a hero.
“He reigned over seven movies as James Bond with exceptional skill and comic timing laced with a stiletto vengeance. He knew his comedy, he knew who he was and he played onstage and off with an easy grace and charm. He knew that we knew.”
Brosnan also paid tribute to the man behind the public wit and raised eyebrow, recalling his kindness to a then-unknown actor on the For Your Eyes Only set: “By then Roger was the man — the world was at his feet. He was most gracious to the children and myself.”
He pointed out how Moore always kept his superstardom and the crazy business of show in perspective: “We fell in love with a magnificent actor. Never forgetting the audience, never letting the begrudgers in, Sir Roger enthralled the world for many years as Bond. Sir Roger played it to the end with impeccable good manners and a wicked sense of irony that was born of years upon the stage.”
