Best Known As: Film Actor,  Television Actor

Gist:  Pierce Brendan Brosnan (born 16 May 1953) is an Irish actor, film producer and environmentalist, who holds both Irish and American citizenship. After leaving school at 16, Brosnan began training in commercial illustration, but trained at the Drama Centre in London for three years. Following a stage acting career he rose to popularity in the television series Remington Steele.

Brosnan portrayed the secret agent James Bond in GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day. He also provided his voice and likeness to Bond in the video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing and James Bond 007: Nightfire. In 1993, Brosnan starred in Mrs. Doubtfire playing the part of 'Stuart Dunmeyer'. He also played the part of volcanologist Harry Dalton in the film Dante's Peak along with actress Linda Hamilton in 1997. In 1996, he formed, along with Beau St. Clair, a Los Angeles-based production company named Irish DreamTime. He was married to Cassandra Harris until her death, and is now married to Keely Shaye Smith.

Since leaving the role of James Bond, Brosnan has starred in films such as The Matador and Seraphim Falls. He became an American citizen in 2004. In his later years, he has been known for his charitable work and environmental activism. He starred in the movie musical Mamma Mia! as Sam Carmichael, though he received a Golden Raspberry[ for "Worst Supporting Actor".

Life Facts:  Brosnan was born on May 16, 1953 in Navan, County Meath, Ireland to Thomas Brosnan, a carpenter, and May (née Smith), and was their only child. Brosnan was raised in a Catholic family and educated in a local school run by the De La Salle Brothers.

Brosnan's mother moved to London to work as a nurse after his father had abandoned the family. According to Brosnan "Childhood was fairly solitary. I grew up in a very small town in southern Ireland. I never knew my father. He left when I was an infant and I was left in the care of my mother and my grandparents. To be Catholic in the '50s, and to be Irish Catholic in the '50s, and have a marriage which was not there, a father who was not there, consequently, 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".

Brosnan was therefore brought up by his grandparents, Philip and Kathleen Smith, from a young age. After their death, he then lived with an aunt and then an uncle, but was subsequently sent to live with a woman named Eileen, in a poor part of town, but describes it as a welcoming one. Brosnan has expressed contempt for his education by the De La Salle Brothers, "I grew up being taught by the Christian Brothers, who were dreadful, dreadful human beings. Just the whole hypocrisy. And the cruelness of their ways toward children. They were very sexually repressed. Bitter. Cowards, really. I have nothing good to say about them and will have nothing good to say about them. It was ugly. Very ugly. Dreadful. I learnt nothing from the Christian Brothers except shame."

Brosnan left Ireland on 12 August 1964 and was reunited with his mother and her new husband, a British World War II veteran, William Carmichael, now living in the Scottish village of Longniddry. Brosnan quickly embraced his mother's new husband as a father figure. Later moving back to London, Brosnan was educated at Elliott School, a state secondary modern school in Putney, West London. Brosnan has spoken about the transition from Ireland to England and his education in London; "When you go to a very large city, a metropolis like London, as an Irish boy of 10, life suddenly moves pretty fast. From a little school of, say, seven classrooms in Ireland, to this very large comprehensive school, with over 2,000 children. And you're Irish. And they make you feel it; the British have a wonderful way of doing that, and I had a certain deep sense of being an outsider".



After leaving school at 16, he decided to be a painter and began training in commercial illustration at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. At the Oval House in 1969, he came in a workshop to rehearse. A fire eater was teaching women how to put the flames across the chest and they had their tops off. So he thought he'd join in and learnt how to fire-eat. A circus agent saw him busking and hired him for three years. Brosnan has described the feeling of becoming an actor and the impact it had on his life, "When I found acting, or when acting found me, it was a liberation. 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."

2005]]

Brosnan's first post-Bond role was that of Daniel Rafferty in 2004's Laws of Attraction. Garreth Murphy, of entertainment.ie, described Brosnan's performance as "surprisingly effective, gently riffing off his James Bond persona and supplementing it with a raffish energy". In the same year, Brosnan starred in After the Sunset alongside Salma Hayek and Woody Harrelson. The film elicited generally negative reviews and a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Brosnan's next film was 2005's The Matador. He starred as Julian Noble, a jaded, boozy assassin who meets a travelling salesman (Greg Kinnear) in a Mexican bar. The film was better received than After the Sunset and garnered more positive reviews.

Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times called Brosnan's performance the best of his career. Brosnan was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy but lost to Joaquin Phoenix for Walk the Line.

Brosnan's first film of 2007 was Seraphim Falls, in which he starred alongside fellow Irishman Liam Neeson. The film was released for limited screenings on 26 January 2007 to average reviews. Kevin Crust of the Los Angeles Times noted that Brosnan and Neeson made "fine adversaries;" Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter thought that they were "hard-pressed to inject some much-needed vitality into their sparse lines."

There have been reports as of January 2009 that Pierce Brosnan will be playing the villain in the new Ghostbusters movie.

Pre-production has started on The Thomas Crown Affair 2, the sequel to the 1999 film The Thomas Crown Affair. The sequel, directed by Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, will use Eric Ambler's novel The Light of Day and the 1964 adaptation, Topkapi as a basis. In December 2005, Brosnan was reported to be attached to star in The November Man, an adaptation of Bill Grainger's novel, There Are No Spies, but the project was cancelled in 2007. Brosnan will also be financially backing Caitlin, a film about Caitlin MacNamara, wife of poet Dylan Thomas. The title role will be played by Miranda Richardson and Brosnan will have a small part as Thomas's literary agent, John Brinnin. Brosnan's co-star in Die Another Day, Rosamund Pike, will also appear.

In 2008, Brosnan joined Meryl Streep in the film adaption of the ABBA musical Mamma Mia!. He played Sam Carmichael, one of three men rumoured to be the father of lead Amanda Seyfried, while Streep played her mother. Judy Craymer, producer to the film, said "Pierce brings a certain smooch factor, and we think he'll have great chemistry with Meryl in a romantic comedy." Brosnan's preparation in singing for the role included walking up and down the coast and singing karaoke to his own voice for about six weeks, followed by rehearsals in New York which he noted "sounded dreadful". Brosnan also provided the narration for a feature length, straight to DVD episode of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, The Great Discovery

In 2009, Brosnan will star in The Big Biazarro, directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall. The film is an adaptation of the Leonard Wise novel of the same name. He plays a card player who mentors a headstrong protégé. Brosnan has also spoke recently of making a Western film with fellow Irishmen Gabriel Byrne and Colm Meaney. Brosnan will join Saoirse Ronan and Morgan Freeman in Danny DeVito's adaptation of the 1990 novel The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. He will play the ship's captain, Jaggery

Career Facts:  After graduating from the Drama Centre in 1975, Brosnan began working as an acting assistant stage manager at the York Theatre Royal, making his acting debut in Wait Until Dark. Within six months, he was selected by playwright Tennessee Williams to play the role of McCabe in the British première of The Red Devil Battery Sign. His performance caused a stir in London and Brosnan still has the telegram sent by Williams, stating only "Thank God for you, my dear boy". He continued his career making brief appearances in films such as The Long Good Friday (1980) and The Mirror Crack'd (1980), as well as early television performances in The Professionals, Murphy's Stroke, and Play for Today. He became a television star in the United States with his leading role in the popular miniseries Manions of America. He followed this with his 1982 Masterpiece Theatre documentary that chronicled the life of Lady Nancy Astor the first woman to sit in British Parliament. His portrayal of the love-deprived Robert Gould Shaw II garnered him a 1985 Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

In 1982, Brosnan moved to southern California and rose to popularity in the United States playing the title role in the NBC romantic detective series Remington Steele. After Remington Steele ended in 1987, Brosnan went on to appear in several films, including The Fourth Protocol (1987), a Cold War thriller in which he starred alongside Michael Caine, The Deceivers (1988) and The Lawnmower Man (1992). In 1992, he shot a pilot for NBC called Running Wilde, playing a reporter for Auto World magazine. Jennifer Love Hewitt played his daughter, but the pilot never aired. In 1993 he played a supporting role in the comedy film Mrs Doubtfire. He also appeared in several television films, including Death Train (1993) and Night Watch (1995), a Hong Kong-set spy thriller.

2005]]

Brosnan's first post-Bond role was that of Daniel Rafferty in 2004's Laws of Attraction. Garreth Murphy, of entertainment.ie, described Brosnan's performance as "surprisingly effective, gently riffing off his James Bond persona and supplementing it with a raffish energy". In the same year, Brosnan starred in After the Sunset alongside Salma Hayek and Woody Harrelson. The film elicited generally negative reviews and a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Brosnan's next film was 2005's The Matador. He starred as Julian Noble, a jaded, boozy assassin who meets a travelling salesman (Greg Kinnear) in a Mexican bar. The film was better received than After the Sunset and garnered more positive reviews.

Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times called Brosnan's performance the best of his career. Brosnan was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy but lost to Joaquin Phoenix for Walk the Line.

Brosnan's first film of 2007 was Seraphim Falls, in which he starred alongside fellow Irishman Liam Neeson. The film was released for limited screenings on 26 January 2007 to average reviews. Kevin Crust of the Los Angeles Times noted that Brosnan and Neeson made "fine adversaries;" Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter thought that they were "hard-pressed to inject some much-needed vitality into their sparse lines."

There have been reports as of January 2009 that Pierce Brosnan will be playing the villain in the new Ghostbusters movie.

Pre-production has started on The Thomas Crown Affair 2, the sequel to the 1999 film The Thomas Crown Affair. The sequel, directed by Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, will use Eric Ambler's novel The Light of Day and the 1964 adaptation, Topkapi as a basis. In December 2005, Brosnan was reported to be attached to star in The November Man, an adaptation of Bill Grainger's novel, There Are No Spies, but the project was cancelled in 2007. Brosnan will also be financially backing Caitlin, a film about Caitlin MacNamara, wife of poet Dylan Thomas. The title role will be played by Miranda Richardson and Brosnan will have a small part as Thomas's literary agent, John Brinnin. Brosnan's co-star in Die Another Day, Rosamund Pike, will also appear.

In 2008, Brosnan joined Meryl Streep in the film adaption of the ABBA musical Mamma Mia!. He played Sam Carmichael, one of three men rumoured to be the father of lead Amanda Seyfried, while Streep played her mother. Judy Craymer, producer to the film, said "Pierce brings a certain smooch factor, and we think he'll have great chemistry with Meryl in a romantic comedy." Brosnan's preparation in singing for the role included walking up and down the coast and singing karaoke to his own voice for about six weeks, followed by rehearsals in New York which he noted "sounded dreadful". Brosnan also provided the narration for a feature length, straight to DVD episode of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, The Great Discovery

In 2009, Brosnan will star in The Big Biazarro, directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall. The film is an adaptation of the Leonard Wise novel of the same name. He plays a card player who mentors a headstrong protégé. Brosnan has also spoke recently of making a Western film with fellow Irishmen Gabriel Byrne and Colm Meaney. Brosnan will join Saoirse Ronan and Morgan Freeman in Danny DeVito's adaptation of the 1990 novel The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. He will play the ship's captain, Jaggery