The advert Pierce Brosnan apologised for making: “My sincerest and heartfelt apologies”
Everyone may have their favourite James Bond actor based on who was playing the role when they were growing up, but it’s hard to overstate the importance that Pierce Brosnan played within the history of the franchise.
The 007 agent was essentially considered dead after the muted reception to Timothy Dalton’s appearances in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill, which led to a six-year gap with no new Bond films, after which Brosnan turned it around with Goldeneye, offering a fresh, exciting soft reboot that saw Bond emerge from the Cold War in a slick, high-tech 1990s action film.
Although the subsequent three films he starred in had diminishing returns, Brosnan became the face of the series for a prolonged period of time, as he had finally made Bond feel ‘cool’ again.
The global fame that came with playing an international secret agent has stuck with Brosnan, even though it’s been well over two decades since he last slipped into the tuxedo, and although this made him a compelling name to use to market a variety of products, the actor was once trapped in a situation where he was not entirely aware of what he was selling.
Brosnan had agreed to use his likeness to advertise a single product for the Indian brand Pan Bahar, but was later informed that his image had been used to sell a controversial breath freshener that posed potential health risks. It wasn’t an association he wanted to have when considering his personal experiences with tragedies linked to cancer; after losing his first wife and daughter to ovarian cancer, he said in a statement that he was “fully committed to supporting women’s health care and research programmes that improve human health and alleviate suffering”.
There are many instances in which celebrities are forced to make half-hearted declarations following embarrassing endorsements, but in Brosnan’s case, he wasn’t aware of how his name and image would be used. In his statement, he made it clear that he had been duped into using his likeness to sell a wide range of products that he hadn’t personally approved of.
“As a man who has spent decades championing women’s health care and environmental protection, I was distressed to learn of Pan Bahar’s unauthorised and deceptive use of my image to endorse their range of pan masala products,” he claimed, “I would never have entered into an agreement to promote a product in India that is dangerous to one’s health.”
The earnestness with which Brosnan approached the controversy makes it far more believable when he offered his “sincerest and heartfelt apologies” to those who had been offended, the weight of his name in this showing how little his star power has faded since the release of Die Another Day, his last Bond film.
It can often be a challenge for Bond actors to find an exciting career after the franchise, as evidenced by the lacklustre roles offered to Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton, but Brosnan has entered an exciting new age of his career, taking on memorable parts in everything from Steven Soderbergh’s twisty spy thriller Black Bag to Guy Ritchie’s gangster drama Mobland. Even if he’s no longer 007, he is still one of the coolest people in the world.
