CONVENTIONALLY handsome, politely wary and apparently straight out of a mould respectfully marked for Cary Grant cloning purposes actor Pierce Brosnan, the current 007, is possibly, at 43, a millionaire or close enough. He already owns his own production company, Irish Dreamtimes. The man from Navan may not have yet proved himself as anything more than a competent actor with a likeable, uncomplicated screen presence while on his way to becoming a movie star. But star he is and standing in the sharp spring light directed at the entrance of a Dublin hotel, he looks slightly unreal. Taller, tidier, more tanned and somehow cleaner than the rest of us, like a model waiting for a photographer.
The smile is less quizzical, Bond's studied irony not quite as evident. But the people walking by look at him as if he is from another planet, or at least, from another world - that strange place called Movieland where films are called "motion pictures" and you have to be tough to survive.
While debate continues for the moment over the respective, if contrasting, virtues of multiple award winning films such as The English Patient, Fargo or Shine, Brosnan is in Dublin to promote his new movie, Roger Donaldson's Dante's Peak. It is a formula action film, dominated by extraordinarily realistic special effects simulating volcanic activity. Brosnan accepts it is more about reacting than acting. "When your costar is a volcano and it is about to erupt, you have to respond. This kind of movie is concerned with how real people behave in real life situations and you hope to make it believable. If you're supposed to look shocked, you do and when the roof begins to cave in, you have to make the appropriate grimaces - you have to make it look like that is exactly what is happening." His face may have proved his fortune thus far, but it has also been a handicap.
Brosnan is weary of being dismissed as "too pretty to take seriously" or of possessing only a limited acting range, confining him to smooth romantic leads or well dressed cads.
"I've been in the business for a long time now, I didn't just arrive with Bond" he points out. It's true, he had spent more than a decade working in England, mainly on stage, before he arrived in Hollywood for his first big break, a television series - the spoof detective Remington Steele. The worldly character he played in that is a precursor of his Bond. Destined to be locked in the popular memory as a figure born wearing tuxedo and bow tie, as well as the regulation smirk as firmly fixed in place as his black hair, he is likely to take roles such as the smoothie suitor in Mrs Doubtfire (1993). Playing to Robin Williams's crazed spurned husband, Brosnan showed he does not lack a sense of humour.
In Dante's Peak Brosnan seems quiet and world weary. The character he is portraying on screen is closer to his actual personality than are any of his screen manifestations. During the past decade he has experienced his wife's long illness and death from ovarian cancer. Having helped raise his two step children who are now adults, the son Brosnan had with Cassie is now approaching 14. Married at 23, he has been a father for 20 years and is now back at the baby stage again with a nine week old son by his partner Keely Shaye Smith. Indeed, he looks exhausted throughout the film. He could mingle in a crowd and be lost.
Seldom before in his career has he looked as normal and even manages to seem slightly weathered, complete with dental fillings. In real life though, he looks younger, and is dressed entirely in black, down to his shiny patent leather Doc Marten like books which are large enough before he stretches his legs - and places his feet up on the window sill, where the boats suddenly become immense.
Looking out over the street, he speaks about having been woken up at 4.30 am by his baby son and sighs, before assuming an expression which seems to confirm life is a bitch, never mind having to face another interview. Such is the down side of fame. Yet he has featured in Hello magazine.
Eyes trained like a sniper on the street below, he braces himself for the ordeal and Bond like tenses his jaw. He is patient, remote and quickly gives the impression of being a vaguely stubborn individual with a quick temper. His face alternates from aloof disdain to friendliness, settling somewhere between the two. The interview begins in a haphazard way, he is convinced I'm from the Women's Page, while I'm enthusing about the geological content of the movie and commenting on the tensely authentic relationship existing between the female lead and her screen mother in law as played by Elizabeth Hoffman. The $100,000 movie is a risk for him. Although playing a romantic hero, he is acting against type without a tuxedo in sight. The success of Bond means he can take chances.
Harry Dalton is a volcanologist who haying almost lost his life during an eruption in Columbia in which his girl friend died, finds himself being despatched by the United States Geological Survey to investigate trace signs of activity from a long dormant volcano. A newly thriving small resort town situated at the base of the volcano. Investors are interested in the town, so a volcano alert followed by possible evacuation is not welcome. A team of geologists arrive in town, led by Harry's boss, a man who knows that caution can cost money. He overrules Harry, who sulks but remains at the scene. The volcano confirms Harry's fears. As the citizens flee, the roads and bridges buckle and incredible scenes of devastation are created with the use of models as well as a team of stunt drivers.
WITHIN six weeks of opening in the States, where it had to compete at the box office with Star Wars, Dante's Peak grossed $60 million. As Twister demonstrated last year, the public continues to love disaster movies. "It's more than a disaster movie," Brosnan points out, "there is a human story as well and I think you end up caring for the people. Some people didn't like the dog being saved. They thought it was too corny, or too Disney. But you liked the dog? he asks with the kind of sympathy reserved for dealing with the less intelligent.
It quickly becomes clear that Brosnan is not expecting to be discussing volcanoes, but seems pleased at the interest, while making no claims at more than a passing awareness. "Aside from knowing they're dangerous and of course I'm aware of the threat they present, I've no real interest. .. But Roger (the director) was going to be a geologist and I think working on the picture got him very excited about the science end of things." Brosnan leaves and no doubt it was a job and adds: "It is strange to be still talking about the movie, it seems a long time ago now." He seems so far removed from the movie that it is strange he is promoting it.
If Brosnan appears muted, possibly because of my focus on the geology, Roger Donaldson, who looks like an animated Bill Clinton, is delighted with the movie, enthusing about the technology."But it does not diminish your control of the film." Live action footage of Mount St Helens as well as painted backdrops are used along with computer generated smoke, ash and lava. But the technology does not appear to have engaged whim. More than 3,000 people worked on the film and the credits run for seven minutes. For all the wizardry, there is no Bond gimmickry.
How, does Brosnan really feel about being 007? I'm delighted. It's a great banker to have in the back pocket. I'm about to start shooting my second, the 18th Bond, next month." The fifth in a line of Bond descent which began with Sean Connery, Brosnan in fact was a contender in 1986, but lost his chance because of contract commitments. In 1994, three years after his wife's death, he finally, won the right to say: "Bond, James Bond.
Interviewing a movie star is different. A stage actor sits slumped in a shabby dressing room, smoking, discussing text and maybe fiddling with make up or laundry. There might be a heavily marked script on the floor, or whatever there is always a sense of illusion. That shabby costume will look new on stage tonight. A stage performance draws the interviewer as much as the audience in on something which will take shape, only to disappear in everything but the memory. While Brosnan sits being asked the same old questions about his childhood, an international film company is busily promoting its product, the movie. United International Pictures has come to Dublin to launch the movie which opens tomorrow.
A team of practical business people have taken over an entire floor of the hotel. It is like a military operation, only the maps are missing. Time is rationed out. The European press are here. Commercial cinema is big business and Dante's Peak is being closely pursued in the marketing stakes by the forthcoming Volcano, a similar movie with a bigger star, Oscar winning Tommy Lee Jones.
Brosnan wanted it to premier here. He has never given the impression of being overly romantic about Ireland. Are his memories too bitter? He seems surprised. "I am romantic about Ireland" he says guardedly. Romantic perhaps, but he does not romanticise it. As visiting emigrants go, he has always been candidly open eyed. The only child of unhappy parents, Pierce Brosnan was born in Navan, Co Meath, in May 1953. His father left when he was a baby. "Tom Brosnan was a Kerryman. He took off and that was that," he says, and then adds, "maybe you had better not say that. My relatives are going to read this."
Tougher and angrier than his tensely controlled demeanour might suggest, he has always been honest, both in his description of his lonely early life and in his desire to leave it behind him. Nor does he want to offend: "But hell it's what happened, it's the truth, so why not say it? It was very hard on my mother. She's from Navan and she was left to face all that vicious small town gossip. This was the Fifties and the women were always blamed. She had to leave.
From the Oval House Theatre Group he moved on to the Drama Centre, where he, became a full time student. Two jobs were vital; he was cast as McCabe in the British, premiere of Red Devil Battery Sign, and later appeared in Zeffirelli's Filumena. A television mini series, The Man ions of America resulted in his being offered another series, Remington Steele. It was 1982. Brosnan and his wife Cassandra Harris arrived in America. Long before he had left England, though, he had decided that, for him, the present is far better than the past.
His father is dead. "When did Tom die?" he asks, "1986, 87, 88?" His wife Cassie's death has been the worst grief he has ever suffered. "I spoke about it so much. Probably too much. But talking about it certainly helped me." Apparently Cassie was about 10 years his senior. When asked, Brosnan replies, "she was a bit older." Marrying an older woman with a family probably made him grow up quicker, while also keeping him suspended in a lengthy youth. Brosnan gives the impression of someone caught between youth and age; between caution and reckless ambition. He is driven by a combination of insecurity and self belief. As for his Cary Grant like quality:"It's been very useful. I have every reason for being more than grateful to it."
Yes there is a difference between a movie star and a working actor. Beyond the bustle of the UPI promotional operation Keely Shaye Smith is standing at the door of her room holding the baby and waiting for her dry cleaning to be collected. Brosnan is now furious Set to continue as Bond as long as it suits him, he seems utterly neutral, almost impersonal. Neither particularly happy nor tormented, he becomes animated when discussing The English Patient of which he says, the film is very different to the book. Brosnan must be tired of being quizzed about his childhood and early in the conversation had said with a smile and a wave of his hand, "let's leave the childhood behind." Perhaps he is really only engaged when working before a camera? Brosnan the man may well be more inventive than Brosnan the actor.
His mother went to London to train as a nurse. She left Brosnan with her family and he was raised by his grandparents and his aunt. "If you look at the facts, my childhood seems pretty grim, but I wasn't miserable. I swam in the Boyne; I fished it. I had good times . . . but then there were the good old Christian Brothers, who beat us and terrorised us and all in the name of Christianity - I'll never forgive them." When he was ten and a half his mother sent for him.
BROSNAN describes being prepared for the flight to London, "with an asprin bottle of holy water and a rosary in my mind." Accompanied on the flight by a local priest, the boy was soon abandoned at the airport. By then his mother had remarried, they lived in Fulham and then moved to Putney. Of his first summer in London, he remembers the heat and how the fun started once he arrived at school. "There I was with South London kids and me with a thick Irish accent. I was in fights all the time. After a while I decided being funny made life easier than having to fight, so I tried that instead. It worked." Of the young Brosnan, he says: "I was wild and shy, if that's possible." He played rugby and was good at drawing. His talent for art earned his first job on leaving.
Training as a commercial artist, "I drew furniture and could do a neat little cupboard." Even when he smiles at the memories, it is as if they are stories he was once told about a person he never met. Through a friend he began going to a local arts group and soon became involved in acting.
How Irish does he feel? It seems a stupid question. Half shrugging, he thinks before replying: "The English never let you forget you are Irish. It's funny in England, I'm Irish or American. But in the States, I get all the English parts." The reality is that Brosnan, through no fault of his own, is from nowhere. Having exchanged his Navan accent for a London one, he was also mixing with people from all over Britain, never mind London - and from abroad as well. It was London in the late 1960s. "It was exciting. Through being with the people from the Oval House Arts Club, I found myself learning things. I hadn't learnt much at school. But now I was hearing about books I had never heard of. I started buying books all the time. Books I never got around to reading. I did read Jean Paul Sartre's Nausea. I thought it was amazing, I was having my mind opened and it was great."
