Pierce Brosnan's
reputation as an artist has Bond-movie momentum.
Photograph by Greg Gorman. What makes a good Bond (James Bond)? Like a perfectly balanced martini, Ian Fleming’s iconic literary character demands a specific formula: equal parts confidence and calm; intelligence (sometimes eclipsed by pride); and a vermouth-style wash of mischievousness, wit and sex appeal. Shaken, of course, with the potential to knock you from your seat. And served with a singular roguish garnish.
To expect any mortal to embody all of the above and more on screen is a hefty ask, one that just seven actors have attempted in the 62 years since the release of the first film. Sean Connery planted the cinematic flag for Bond in 1962, with his bone-dry delivery and distinctive brand of cool. Roger Moore played 007 with added humour, and arguably the silliest gadgets. Daniel Craig, the franchise’s most recent Bond, brought a grittier, muscular sensibility to the MI6 Secret Intelligence Service agent.
And then there’s Pierce Brosnan, who imbued Bond with a pitch-perfect mixture of suavity, savagery and a touch of world-weariness throughout his seven-year tenure in the role. He relished the quirks of the series’s scripts. Case in point: after knocking a henchman into a churning newspaper printing press in 1997’s “Tomorrow Never Dies”, he somehow manages to convincingly deliver the line: “They’ll print anything these days.” The character of 007, and the long cultural shadow he cast, seemed to be Brosnan’s destiny.
Brosnan was in his mid-30s and already a star when he started painting — driven, as so many artists are, by a compulsion to make sense of the world around him: his then wife, the Australian actorCassandra Harris, was undergoing chemotherapy treatments at the time, for ovarian cancer. “On this particular evening, I was deeply worried about what was happening to our lives,” he says. “I set up a studio, the easel and the paints, and I really began to paint with my fingers.” The result was “One Dark Night”, a work he keeps to this day.
