The advice Pierce Brosnan gave a pre-fame Colin Farrell
The rich pastures of Ireland have spawned a fine crop of acting talent over the past few decades. The County Louth-born actor Pierce Brosnan enjoyed the limelight through the 1990s and early 2000s as the titular star of James Bond for four movies. During this period, he attracted attention in Holywood and enjoyed several prominent lead roles outside the 007 franchise, such as 1997’s Dante’s Peak and 1999’s The Thomas Crown Affair. Despite his success, Brosnan’s road to fame and fortune was as long as it was challenging. As it turns out, he imparted some of this tenacious spirit to his fellow Irish actor Colin Farrell.
Brosnan’s father abandoned his family when he was just an infant, leaving his mother to take on solo parenting duties. When he was four years old, Brosnan’s mother made the difficult decision to leave Ireland for London in search of nursing work. After that, he lived with his maternal grandparents until their deaths, which led to his eventual rehoming at a boarding house.
“Childhood was fairly solitary,” Brosnan recalled in a 1997 interview with Paul Chutkow. “I never knew my father. He left when I was an infant. […] To be Irish Catholic in the 1950s and have a marriage which was not there, a father who was not there […] the mother, the wife suffered greatly. My mother was very courageous. She took the bold steps to go away and be a nurse in England. Basically, wanting a better life for her and myself. My mother came home once a year, twice a year.”
With such a solitary and confusing beginning to his life, Brosnan learned the importance of inner strength and tenacity. He understood his mother’s “bold” decision to search for a better living in England. When Brosnan enrolled at Drama Centre London in his late teens to begin his foray into acting, he knew that success was a by-product of passion and determination.
“When I found acting, or when acting found me, it was a liberation,” he told Chutkow. “It was a stepping stone into another life, away from a life that I had, and acting was something I was good at, something which was appreciated. That was a great satisfaction in my life.”
Brosnan graduated from drama school in 1975 and began his acting career on stage. His passion made for a prolific stage career as both an actor and stage director, and by the early 1980s, his phone began to ring for small acting roles. In 1985, Brosnan was nominated for the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Golden Globe for his performance in the mini-series Nancy Astor. This pivotal moment set the Irish actor, who was then in his 30s, on the trajectory towards Bond.
In a recent interview feature for The Hollywood Reporter, Colin Farrell, who was recently nominated for an Oscar for his performance in The Banshees of Inisherin, told Adam Sandler how a small yet momentous piece of advice helped him to achieve his aspirations as an actor. He recalled: “Pierce Brosnan got me in a bear hug when I was… I think it was before I had done [2000 movie] Tigerland, so it was before I had done my first American film. He just picked me up, and he said, ‘Keep being bold.’ Now I don’t know if he knew I was bold or whether I was bold at the time, but it was a lovely thing to hear from a man whose work I was aware of, especially as an Irishman, for all those years.”
“For me now, at 46, ‘What is bold?’ I think the boldest thing I can do, or any of us can do, in life, is to look – like a two-prong thing – to locate what has meaning for us and to really pursue with as much honesty, and even [with] the discomfort that can come about from honesty. To pursue the things that really hold meaning for us. Whether that’s being a friend, a father, an artist, a lover… all the above. So, keep being bold, yeah. Life can be hard. Life can sometimes just want you to lie down under it and do nothing and not leave the house. Just keep being bold. Push through.”
Watch the full interview feature below, which includes Austin Butler, Brendan Fraser and Ke Huy Quan.
