Pierce Brendan Brosnan, OBE (born 16 Might 1953) is an Irish actor, film producer and environmentalist who holds Irish and American citizenship. Right after leaving school at 16, Brosnan began training in commercial illustration, but trained at the Drama Centre in London for three years. Following a stage acting career he rose to popularity in the television series Remington Steele (1982–87).

Following Remington Steele, Brosnan took the lead in several films for example Dante’s Peak and the Thomas Crown Affair. In 1995, he became the fifth actor to portray secret agent James Bond from the official film series, starring in four films between 1995 and 2002. He also provided his voice and likeness to Bond from the 2004 video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing. Since playing Bond he has starred in such successes as The Matador (nominated for a Golden Globe, 2005) and Mamma Mia! (National Movie Award, 2008).

In 1996, along with Beau St. Clair, Brosnan formed Irish DreamTime, a Los Angeles-based production firm. In later years, he has become known for his charitable work and environmental activism.

He was married to Australian actress Cassandra Harris from 쌼 until her early death in 1991. He married American journalist and author Keely Shaye Smith in 2001, becoming an American citizen in 2004.

Early life

Brosnan was born on 16 May 1953 at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Drogheda, County Louth,Ireland to Thomas Brosnan, a carpenter, and May well (née Smith), and was their only child. Brosnan was raised in the Roman Catholic family members and educated inside a local college run by the Christian Brothers. He lived in Navan, County Meath for twelve years and considers it as his hometown. Brosnan’s mom moved to London to work like a nurse right after his father had abandoned the loved ones. According to Brosnan “Childhood was fairly solitary. I grew up in the really small town known as Navan in County Meath. I never knew my father. He left when I was an infant and I was left inside care of my mom and my grandparents. To be Catholic inside the ’50s, and being Irish Catholic within the ’50s, and have a marriage which was not there, a father who was not there, consequently, the mom, the wife suffered greatly. My mom was very courageous. She took the bold steps to go away and be a nurse in England. Basically wanting a far better existence for her and myself. My mom came house once a year, twice a year.”

Brosnan was therefore brought up by his grandparents, Philip and Kathleen Smith, from a young age.Immediately after their death, he then lived with an aunt and then an uncle, but was subsequently sent to live with a woman named Eileen, in the poor part of town, but describes it as being a welcoming one.Brosnan has expressed contempt for his education through the Christian Brothers, “I grew up being taught through the Christian Brothers, who were dreadful, dreadful human beings. Just the whole hypocrisy. As well as the cruelness of their ways toward children.

They had been extremely sexually repressed. Bitter. Cowards, actually. I have next to nothing good to say about them and will have absolutely nothing very good to say about them. It was ugly. Extremely ugly. Dreadful. I learnt nothing from the Christian Brothers except shame.”
Brosnan left Ireland on 12 August 1964 and was reunited with his mother and her new husband, a British World War II veteran, William Carmichael, now living in the Scottish village of Longniddry. Brosnan swiftly embraced his mother’s new husband being a father figure.Carmichael took Brosnan to see a James Bond film for the very first time (Goldfinger), in the age of eleven. Later moving back to London, Brosnan was educated at Elliott University, a state secondary modern college in Putney, west London.[8] Brosnan has spoken about the transition from Ireland to England and his education in London; “When you go to a extremely big city, a metropolis like London, as an Irish boy of 10, life suddenly moves pretty fast. From a little school of, say, seven classrooms in Ireland, to this incredibly significant comprehensive school, with over 2,000 youngsters. And you’re Irish.

And they make you feel it; the British have a wonderful way of doing that, and I had a specific deep sense of becoming an outsider.”When he attended university, his nickname was “Irish”.
After leaving university at 16, he made the decision to be a painter and began training in commercial illustration at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. At the Oval House in 1969, he came to a workshop to rehearse. A fire eater was teaching women how to put the flames across the chest while topless, and he made the decision to join in and learnt how to fire-eat.A circus agent saw him busking and hired him for 3 years.He later trained for 3 many years as an actor at the Drama Centre London.Brosnan has described the feeling of becoming an actor and the impact it had on his living, “When I observed acting, or when acting discovered me, it was a liberation. It was a stepping stone into another existence, away from a life that I had, and acting was one thing I was fine at, something which was appreciated. That was a fantastic satisfaction in my life.”

Early career

After graduating in the Drama Centre in 1975, Brosnan started working as an acting assistant stage manager at the York Theatre Royal, generating his acting debut in Wait Till Dark. Within six months, he was selected by playwright Tennessee Williams to play the position of McCabe within the British première with the Red Devil Battery Sign.His performance caused a stir in London and Brosnan nonetheless has the telegram sent by Williams, stating only “Thank God for you, my dear boy”.He continued his career doing brief appearances in films for instance The Extended Excellent Friday (1980) and the Mirror Crack’d (1980), too as early television performances within the Professionals, Murphy’s Stroke, and Play for Today. He became a television star in the United States with his leading part within the popular miniseries Manions of America.He followed this with his 1982 Masterpiece Theatre documentary that chronicled the life of Lady Nancy Astor– the very first woman to sit in British Parliament. His portrayal on the love-deprived Robert Gould Shaw II garnered him a 1985 Golden Globe Award nomination for Finest Supporting Actor.

In 1982, Brosnan moved to southern California and rose to popularity from the United States playing the title part inside NBC romantic detective series Remington Steele. The Washington Post noted that very same year that Brosnan “could make it being a young James Relationship.”Right after Remington Steele ended in 1987, Brosnan went on to appear in a number of films, which include The Fourth Protocol (1987), a Cold War thriller in which he starred alongside Michael Caine, The Deceivers and James Clavell’s Noble House each in (1988), and also the Lawnmower Man (1992). In 1992, he shot a pilot for NBC named Running Wilde, playing a reporter for Auto Globe magazine. Jennifer Adore Hewitt played his daughter, however the pilot under no circumstances aired.In 1993 he played a supporting role from the comedy film Mrs Doubtfire. He also appeared in numerous television films, which include Death Train (1993) and Night Watch (1995), a spy thriller set in Hong Kong.

James Relationship (1995–2004)

Brosnan (appropriate) as James Relationship in Tomorrow By no means Dies.
Brosnan first met James Relationship films producer Albert R. Broccoli on the sets of For Your Eyes Only since his 1st wife was within the motion picture. Broccoli mentioned, “if he can act… he’s my guy” to inherit the part of Bond from Roger Moore.It absolutely was reported by equally Entertainment Tonight as well as the National Enquirer, that Brosnan was going to inherit another purpose of Moore’s, that from the Saint, Simon Templar.Brosnan denied the rumours in July 1993 but added, “it’s nevertheless languishing there on someone’s desk in Hollywood.”

In 1986, Timothy Dalton was approached for the Relationship role; his involvement using the񎧂 motion picture adaptation of Brenda Starr kept Dalton from being able to accept it. A amount of actors were then screen-tested for that role– notably Sam Neill– but had been ultimately passed over by Broccoli.Remington Steele was about to end, so Brosnan was offered the position, however the publicity revived Remington Steele and Brosnan had to decline the role of James Bond, owing to his contract.

By then, Dalton had turn out to be readily available again, and he accepted the position for the Living Daylights (1987), and Licence to Kill (1989). Legal squabbles about ownership of the film franchise resulted in the cancellation of a proposed third Dalton film in 1991 (rumoured title: The Property of the Lady)and put the series on a hiatus, which lasted six years. GoldenEye was originally written with Dalton as Bond[citation needed], but he turned it down. On 7 June 1994, Brosnan was announced because the fifth actor to play Connection.

Brosnan was signed for a three-film deal using the option of a fourth. He initial appeared as Relationship in 1995′s GoldenEye to very much essential praise. Critic James Berardinelli described him as “a decided improvement around his immediate predecessor” using a “flair for wit to go along with his natural charm.”GoldenEye grossed US $350 million worldwide. It had the fourth highest worldwide gross of any film in 1995. It was the most effective Bond motion picture at that time without inflation. Generously open to fresh ideas, he accepted the purpose of Grey Owl, within the Canadian series of short historical movies known as “The Heritage Minutes.”

In 1996, Brosnan formed a motion picture production company entitled “Irish DreamTime” as well as producing partner and extended time friend Beau St. Clair.Three many years later the company’s first studio project, The Thomas Crown Affair, was released and met the two vital and box-office success.Brosnan returned in 1997′s Tomorrow By no means Dies and 1999′s The Globe Is not Enough, which have been also prosperous. In 2002, Brosnan appeared for his fourth time as Attachment in Die Yet another Day. The motion picture received very mixed assessments but was however a accomplishment in the box office. Brosnan himself subsequently criticised quite a few aspects of his fourth Attachment movie. Through the promotion, he mentioned that he would like to continue his purpose as James Relationship: “I’d like to try and do another, certain. Connery did six. Six would be a quantity, then under no circumstances come back.”

Brosnan asked EON Productions when accepting the part, to get allowed to operate on other projects among Attachment films. The request was granted, and for every Bond movie, Brosnan appeared in at least two other mainstream films, which includes several he created.Brosnan played a wide range of roles in among his Attachment motion picture appearances, ranging from a scientist in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!, to a volcanologist in Dante’s Peak and the title position in Grey Owl, a biopic about Englishman Archibald Stansfeld Belaney who adopted the Ojibwa name Grey Owl and turn into a single of Canada’s primary conservationists.

Shortly right after the release of Die One more Day, the media started questioning whether or not Brosnan would reprise the part for any fifth time. Brosnan kept in mind that each aficionados and critics were unhappy with Roger Moore playing the function till he was 58, but he was receiving popular support from equally critics along with the franchise fanbase for the fifth installment. For this reason, he remained enthusiastic about reprising his position.Throughout 2004, it had been rumored that negotiations had broken down in between Brosnan as well as the producers to make way to get a new and younger actor.This was denied by MGM and EON Productions. In July 2004, Brosnan announced that he was quitting the position, stating “Bond is another lifetime, behind me”; this is believed by some to become a failed negotiating ploy.In October 2004, Brosnan stated he considered himself dismissed through the role.Though Brosnan had been rumoured frequently as still in the running to play 007, he had denied it numerous times, and in February 2005 he posted on his website that he was completed using the position.Daniel Craig took more than the purpose on 14 October 2005.In an interview with the Globe and Mail, Brosnan was asked what he thought of Craig as the new James Relationship. He replied, “I’m looking forward to it like we’re all seeking forward to it. Daniel Craig is a great actor and he’s going to perform a fantastic job”.He reaffirmed this help in an interview for the International Herald Tribune, stating that “[Craig's] on his way to becoming a memorable Attachment.”

In the course of his tenure on the James Bond films, Brosnan also took part in James Relationship video games. In 2002, Brosnan’s likeness was utilized since the face of Connection within the James Attachment video game Nightfire (voiced by Maxwell Caulfield).In 2004, Brosnan starred in the Bond game Everything or Nothing, contracting for his likeness to become applied as well as doing the voice-work with the character.He also starred along with Jamie Lee Curtis and Geoffrey Rush within the Tailor of Panama in 2001, and lent his voice for the Simpsons episode “Treehouse of Horror XII”, like a machine with Pierce Brosnan’s voice.

Post-James Connection (2004–present)

Brosnan (2nd in the left) with the cast of Mamma Mia! and ABBA (1st, 5th, and 6th from left and 2nd from correct)
Since 2004, Brosnan has talked of backing a movie about Caitlin Macnamara, wife of poet Dylan Thomas,the title position to be played by Miranda Richardson. Brosnan’s 1st post-Bond purpose was that of Daniel Rafferty in 2004′s Laws of Attraction. Garreth Murphy, of entertainment.ie, described Brosnan’s efficiency as “surprisingly efficient, gently riffing off his James Attachment persona and supplementing it having a raffish energy”.From the exact same year, Brosnan starred in Right after the Sunset alongside Salma Hayek and Woody Harrelson. The motion picture elicited usually negative opinions plus a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Brosnan’s next movie was 2005′s The Matador. He starred as Julian Noble, a jaded, boozy assassin who meets a travelling salesman (Greg Kinnear) in the Mexican bar. The film was much better received than Immediately after the Sunset and garnered more positive evaluations. Roger Ebert for that Chicago Sun-Times called Brosnan’s performance the very best of his career.Brosnan was nominated for the Golden Globe award for Finest Actor in a Musical or Comedy but lost to Joaquin Phoenix for Walk the Line. In December 2005, Brosnan was reported to get starring from the November Man, an adaptation of Bill Granger’s novel, You can find No Spies however the project was cancelled in񎧗.

In 2007, Brosnan appeared inside film Seraphim Falls alongside fellow Irishman Liam Neeson. The movie was released for limited screenings on 26 January 썗 to average reviews. Kevin Crust from the Los Angeles Times noted that Brosnan and Neeson made “fine adversaries;”Michael Rechtshaffen in the Hollywood Reporter believed that they were “hard-pressed to inject some much-needed vitality into their sparse lines.”Throughout the identical year, Brosnan spoke of producing a western with fellow Irishmen Gabriel Byrne and Colm Meaney and creating an adaptation from the 1990 novel The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. It had been suggested that Brosnan would play the ship’s captain, Jaggery, joining Saoirse Ronan and Morgan Freeman. In that same year Pierce Brosnan starred as Tom Ryan in Butterfly on a Wheel.

In 2008, Brosnan joined Meryl Streep inside the film adaption in the ABBA musical Mamma Mia!.He played Sam Carmichael, a single of three men rumoured to be the father of lead Amanda Seyfried, while Streep played her mother.Judy Craymer, producer for the movie, mentioned “Pierce brings a certain smooch factor, and we think he’ll have great chemistry with Meryl in a romantic comedy.”Brosnan’s preparation in singing for that purpose included walking up and down the coast and singing karaoke to his own voice for about six weeks, followed by rehearsals in New York which he noted he “sounded dreadful.”Brosnan’s singing inside movie was normally disparaged by critics, with his singing compared in separate opinions for the sound of a water buffalo,a donkey, and also a wounded racoon.In September 2008, Brosnan provided the narration for Thomas the Tank Engine in Thomas and Friends as well as the Fantastic Discovery.

In 2009, Brosnan starred in the Huge Biazarro, (alternative title The Ace), an adaptation of the Leonard Wise novel, directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall. Brosnan takes the position of your card player who mentors a headstrong protégé.Also In 2009, Brosnan finished the well-received The Ghost Writer, playing a British Prime Minister through the Iraq war years, directed and created by Roman Polanski. The movie won a Silver Bear in the Berlin International Video Festival. He starred as Charles Hawkins inside video Remember Me and as Chiron in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, the two released in 2010.

Personal life

Brosnan met Australian actress Cassandra Harris by way of David Harris, a single of Richard Harris’ nephews, in 1977, shortly right after he left drama school. On meeting her he has described his feelings saying “What a lovely looking woman. I never for an instant thought she as somebody I’d spend 17 years of my life with. I didn’t think of wooing her, or attempting to woo her; I just wanted to appreciate her beauty and who she was.” They began dating, and eventually bought a house in Wimbledon. They married on 27 December 1980 and had one son together, Sean, who was born on 13 September 1ᚗ. They lived with her youngsters, Charlotte and Christopher, and immediately after their father Dermot Harris died in 1986, he adopted them and they took the surname Brosnan.

Financially, Brosnan was concerned about earning enough dollars to obtain by at this time, and supplemented their income by working in West End productions, and also a television film about Irish horse racing. Soon after Harris appeared inside James Bond film For your Eyes Only in 1981, with a bank loan, they moved to southern California where Brosnan had his first interview in Hollywood for Remington Steele, and subsequently no longer had financial worries.

When Remington Steele was sent to Ireland to film an episode there, generating considerable publicity in doing so, Brosnan was briefly reunited with his father who visited his hotel. Brosnan had expected to see a really tall man, but describes his father as, “a man of medium stature, pushed-back silver hair, flinty eyes plus a twizzled jaw. He had a extremely strong Kerry accent.”On the other hand, Brosnan expresses regret that they met under such circumstances in a public environment rather than on his own terms which would have provided him the opportunity to speak privately with him.

Whilst filming The Deceivers in Rajasthan, India in 1987, his wife Cassandra Harris became seriously ill. She was later diagnosed with ovarian cancer and she died as being a result with the illness in December 1991, aged 39.Brosnan struggled to cope with her cancer and death and has stated, “A young woman making her way as a result of lifetime, like a mother, as an actress. When your partner gets cancer, then living adjustments. Your timetable and reference for the normal routines and also the way you view living, all this changes. Since you are dealing with death. You are dealing with the possibility of death and dying. And it was that way by way of the chemotherapy, as a result of the first-look operation, the second appear, the third seem, the fourth seem, the fifth search. Cassie was really positive about lifetime. I mean, she had the most incredible energy and outlook on life. It was and is often a terrible loss, and I see it reflected, from time to time, in my youngsters.” Harris had constantly wanted Brosnan to play the role of James Bond, and in 1995, some four years immediately after her death, Brosnan achieved this when he appeared in GoldenEye.

In 1994, Brosnan met American journalist Keely Shaye Smith in Mexico. In 2001, at Ballintubber Abbey in County Mayo, Ireland, they married.They have two sons together, Dylan Thomas Brosnan (birth 13 January 1997) and Paris Beckett Brosnan (birth 27 February 2001).

In July 2003, Queen Elizabeth II awarded Brosnan an honorary OBE for his “outstanding contribution to the British film industry”. As an Irish citizen, he is ineligible to receive the full OBE honour, which is awarded only to a citizen of the Commonwealth realms. In 2002, Brosnan was also awarded an Honorary degree from the Dublin Institute of Technology and, 1 year later, the University College Cork.

On 23 September 2004, Brosnan became a citizen in the United States, but has retained his Irish citizenship. Brosnan said that “my Irishness is in everything I do. It’s the spirit of who I am, as a man, an actor, a father. It’s in which I come from.”Brosnan was asked by a fan if it annoyed him when people get his nationality confused. He stated: “It amuses me in some respects that they ought to confuse me with an Englishman when I’m dyed-in-the-wool, born and bred Irishman.I do not necessarily fly under any flag. But no, it doesn’t bother me.”
Environmental and charitable work

Pierce Brosnan at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2005.
Brosnan supported John Kerry from the 2004 Presidential election and is a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage.An outspoken environmentalist,In 2004, he was named ‘Best-dressed Environmentalist’ by the Sustainable Style Foundation.

Brosnan initial became aware of nuclear disarmament at the age of nine when worldwide condemnation on the 1962 U.S. nuclear tests in Nevada headlined international news.[66] In the course of the 1990s, he participated in news conferences in Washington, D.C. to support Greenpeace draw attention towards the issue.[66] Brosnan boycotted the French GoldenEye premiere to support Greenpeace’s protest against the French nuclear testing program. From 1997 to 2000, Brosnan and wife Smith worked using the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to stop a proposed salt factory from being built at Laguna San Ignacio.[68] The couple with Halle Berry, Cindy Crawford and Daryl Hannah successfully fought the Cabrillo Port Liquefied Organic Gas facility that was proposed off the coast of Malibu and would cause damage towards the marine existence there; the State Lands Commission eventually denied the lease to build the terminal. In May well 2007, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the facility.Brosnan is also listed as a member of the Sea Shepherd’s Board of Advisors.

Brosnan also raises dollars for charitable causes by way of sales of his paintings. He trained early on as an artist, but later shifted to theatre; throughout his initial wife’s terminal illness, he withdrew from acting to be with her and took up painting again for therapeutic reasons, producing colourful landscapes and family members portraits. He has continued painting since then, making use of spare time on set and at house. Profits from sales of giclée prints of his works are provided to a trust to benefit “environmental, children’s and women’s health charities.” Because Harris’s death, Brosnan has been an advocate for cancer awareness and, in 2006, he served as spokesperson for Lee National Denim Day, a breast cancer fundraiser which raises millions of dollars and raises far more income in a single day than any other breast cancer fundraiser.

In May perhaps 2007, Brosnan and Smith donated $100,000 to support replace a playground on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where by they very own a property.On 7 July 2007, Brosnan presented a film at Live Earth in London. He also recorded a television advertisement for the result in.Brosnan lives with his loved ones in Malibu, California.
Pierce Brosnan has been an Ambassador for UNICEF Ireland because 2዁. Pierce recorded a special announcement to mark the launch of UNICEF’s “Unite for Young children. Unite against AIDS” Campaign with Liam Neeson.

Filmography

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