By Last night Pierce Brosnan joined us for a watchalong of his first James Bond film, GoldenEye, from his place in Hawaii. Pierce was great company, obviously, and the whole thing's here, if you fancy catching up or rewatching again.
If you've somehow not got two hours to spare – got another lockdown to get to, have you? –we've collected the best stories, tidbits and surprises direct from Pierce's lovely Hawaiian pad.
Pierce's single-edition Aston Martin Vanquish perished in a fire (1hr 14min 55s)
Having badgered his agent to wangle him an Aston Martin before Die Another Day, Brosnan was worried that he might be stiffed on his car ("That's just not cricket, come on now"), but eventually he was promised a motor – not just a Vanquish of his own, but an edition of one.
"One of the joys of making the film was going down to the Aston Martin workshops, watching my Aston Martin being built," he said.
He spent a day razzing it round a track, and the finished product turned up three months after the film came out. It sounds incredible: "silver – it was diamond-flecked... it was stunning," Brosnan remembers. Unfortunately though, it's not survived.
"Sadly it burnt in a house fire," he said. "But that's another story. All that's left of the Vanquish... two name plates, eight screws."
And then, the most Brosnan conclusion possible: "Ha! Life."
His first introduction to Bond was through Roger Moore (46min 59s)
"I was a huge fan of Sir Roger Moore's – I grew up on The Saint," Brosnan recalled. "I wanted to have my hair like Roger Moore."
Moore came to visit the GoldenEye set in 1995 – "I was very honoured and very proud to stand beside him that day, he was very gracious" – but Moore's Bond also gave Brosnan an early in with producers.
Brosnan's late wife Cassandra Harris was in For Your Eyes Only in 1981, and Brosnan brought his stepchildren along to visit the set during filming.
"It was so, so exciting to be on a James Bond set and to have your wife be a James Bond girl," Brosnan said. "And of course we would joke about me being the next James Bond, never thinking or wishing or desiring the role but I think every actor has it in his mind to play James Bond."
That led to a meeting with producers Michael G Wilson and Cubby Broccoli, and Brosnan pretending to be Bond while driving his "lime green Pacer" home that night.
He kept the Bond suits (51min 41s)
Putting on one of his Bond's Brioni suits "was like putting on a suit of armour," Brosnan said. "You really felt like the character. It gave you a certain presence and elegance."
While he didn't manage to make off with any props from the Bond sets, he does still have a wardrobe of Bond suits.
Brosnan's first shot was a bit of a nightmare (1hr 4mins 25s)
Brosnan's first day of shooting as Bond was the scene in the nightclub with Robbie Coltrane as Valentin Zukovsky and Minnie Driver as an awful singer butchering 'Stand By Your Man'. Unfortunately he was carrying a bit of an injury.
"What had happened was I'd sliced this finger open here, this pinky," Brosnan said. "I had to have my hand in a climate splint for about 10 weeks before filming, and that splint came off the morning of this very first day of shooting."
That finger was extremely stiff, which made the first shot of his Bond career, in which he holds a gun to Zukovsky's head, trickier than anticipated.
"We went for the first take and the finger went 'doink'," Brosnan said, poking his little finger out straight. Obviously that wasn't quite what the scene called for. "Martin Campbell said, 'Cut! What the eff is going on?'"
Despite Brosnan's best efforts it happened again on the second take. Not wanting to swap to a rubber prop gun, he stuck his troublesome little finger to the gun with a plaster.
He nicked bits from Sean Connery and Roger Moore (1hr 7mins 51s)
"Trying to play this role, I could see Roger's way of playing it, I could see Sean's way of playing it," Brosnan explained. "And I stole from both, because both had meaning to me, and once I allowed myself to do that, I was free to find my own personification as the character. And it's trusting yourself, having confidence in yourself to stand there and deliver."
Pierce keeps chickens (1hr 13mins 32s)
Just after a little insight into the difficulties of landing quips ("always tricky to do, to kind of hit on the head – at least I find them tricky to do") Brosnan mentioned that he couldn't crack a window to get some air in because he'd be drowned out by his chickens.
Quentin Tarantino really wanted to do a Bond film (54 mins 39s)
After The World is Not Enough, a Los Angeles summit between Brosnan and Tarantino turned into a very boozy night.
"It was after Kill Bill Vol. 2, and he wanted to meet me, so I went up to Hollywood one day from the beach, and I met him at the Four Seasons," said Brosnan. "I got there at 7pm, I like to be punctual. 7:15 came around, no Quentin, he was upstairs doing press. Someone sent over a martini, so I had a martini, and I waited till 7:30, and I thought, where the heck is he? Word came down, apologies, so I thought, okay, I'll have another martini."
Eventually Tarantino made it down, they had a few more apple martinis, and were soon pretty tooty, in Pierce's recollection.
"He was pounding the table, saying, 'You're the best James Bond, I wanna do James Bond,' and it was very close quarters in the restaurant and I thought, please calm down, but we don't tell Quentin Tarantino to calm down," said Brosnan.
He took the idea to Bond HQ but sadly it didn't get any further.
"He wanted to do James Bond, and I went back to the shop and told them but it wasn't mean to be," Brosnan concluded. "No Quentin Tarantino for James Bond."
Brosnan does actually drink martinis
The other very pleasing takeaway from that anecdote.
He can do a decent Sean Connery impression too (1hr 28mins 46s)
As evidenced by this anecdote about bumping into him after wrapping for lunch one day after filming the explosion in the tunnel ("just at the end, my back caught on fire"). Chucking his bag in the back of his car, he was ready to knock off for the day.
"Just as I closed the boot, there was Sean Connery. 'Hello Sean!' 'Are they paying you enough money?' That's all he said! And I said, 'You know better than I do Sean'."
They had a nice chat about "this and that" and it turned out Connery had come down to the studio to get a haircut. Which seems like... not the first place you'd go to get a haircut.
Bond stuck with him after leaving the role behind (1hr 42mins 32s)
"I suppose it's the walk, the presence, and how one carries oneself," Brosnan said. "He's a hard character to get away from. Not that I wanted to get away from him, because I am the man I am, and you use so much of one's own persona in playing a character like this. There's definitely a melding of the two people, the two personas. I'm just not very good with gadgets."
He'd return to James Bond as a villain (1hr 28mins 26s)
"Would [I] return as a villain? If asked, yes! I believe so," Brosnan told us. MAKE. IT. HAPPEN.
He had some words of advice for Daniel Craig about what he should do next (35 mins 26s)
Craig's offski after No Time To Die, and he'll have his whole life ahead of him. Any pointers?
"Enjoy your life," Brosnan said. "You did a magnificent job, Daniel. You were truly a great Bond. Really, hats off to you sir. I've enjoyed watching you very much. You really grabbed the bull by the horns and ran with it all the way, the world is your oyster and you can do anything you want. Stay well."
Brosnan encouraged a reticent Craig to take the role in the first place (36 mins)
"We did pass in the night Daniel and I, when my day was done," he said. "I knew Daniel had been offered the part and he was very apprehensive about it. I remember seeing him one night with a great group of friends and he was really wrestling with it and I just said, 'Go do it, you can do it, you'll be brilliant, you'll kick yourself if you don't. Snap out of it and go be Bond', and boy did he ever."
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