Michael Madsen’s neighbour Pierce Brosnan helped him land a James Bond role: “It was cool”
One of life’s oldest adages is, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.
While the maxim is undoubtedly nihilistic, it’s also more truthful than most people would ever care to admit. After all, in many industries, advancement is often secured through personal connections made along the way, as opposed to talent or hard work being the sole reason behind it. This is especially true in Hollywood, and sometimes it works out quite nicely. Just ask the late Reservoir Dogs icon Michael Madsen.
By 1998, Madsen had used the notoriety he was bestowed with by Quentin Tarantino’s bloody debut film to forge a solid career on the big screen. He starred in movies like The Getaway, Wyatt Earp, and Donnie Brasco as typical villainous Madsen characters, but also served on the side of the angels in the sci-fi horror, Species, and as a loving foster dad in Free Willy. Hell, he even returned for sequels to both movies.
Somewhere between 1998 and 2002, though, Madsen’s career seemed to fall off a cliff. Suddenly, he was starring in a litany of direct-to-video films, with seven arriving in 1998, six in 2000, and eight in 2001. Madsen has been very honest about this period in his career, admitting that most of these roles were driven by the paycheque. However, because they were smaller movies, he had to make more of them to sustain the lifestyle his family enjoyed during his ’90s heyday.
“I wasn’t about to move my six kids into a trailer park,” Madsen once told The Independent. “When people offered me work, it wasn’t always the best, but I had to buy groceries, and I had to put gas in the car.”
By 2002, Madsen was still taking whatever work he could find, all to keep paying for a home on a beautiful stretch of beach populated by other celebrities. One of these celebs was Pierce Brosnan, who struck up a friendship with Madsen when their children began playing together. Eventually, Madsen decided to shoot his shot. He semi-jokingly said that he’d love to be in one of Brosnan’s James Bond movies, later telling The AV Club, “I thought it would be pretty interesting to be on a resumé.”
To his shock, the gamble worked. Before he knew it, Brosnan had secured Madsen a meeting with super producer Barbara Broccoli. After a quick meeting in London, he landed the Die Another Day part of Damian Falco, an NSA agent of questionable motives who is revealed to be a good guy by the film’s end.
“Doing a Bond picture is one of those experiences that’s there forever, you know?” Madsen remembered fondly. “It was great. We shot at Pinewood Studios, and they gave me a Jaguar to drive around in London. It was nice. I used to ride my bicycle around inside the studio. It was a big set, put it that way. Bond pictures are big movies.”
Interestingly, to add credence to the “It’s who you know” maxim, Madsen revealed that it also helped his case that he had previously worked with Die Another Day director Lee Tamahori on 1996’s Mulholland Falls. “To get into something like that, you’ve got to know more than a few people involved to get you in the door,” Madsen noted, again with unflinching honesty. “But, I loved it. It was cool being in a James Bond film.”
Unfortunately for Madsen, his stint in the Bond universe started and ended with Die Another Day. When asked if Falco was ever planned to become a recurring character in the series, a la Judi Dench’s M, Madsen hinted that it may have been a possibility, but only if his buddy Brosnan had continued playing the iconic superspy. As it was, when he departed the series after four movies, Madsen’s chances of returning also went up in smoke.
“You know, when the new guy took over,” Madsen chuckled, obviously referring to Daniel Craig, “That was it for me, too.”
