\n<\/p>\n
On the last day of March, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, fans approached the actor Pierce Brosnan<\/a> every few minutes. Some addressed him as Mr. Brosnan, some as Mr. Bond, a reference to the four James Bond movies<\/a> he made in the 1990s and early 2000s. (Brosnan has a face that demands honorifics.)<\/p>\n Dressed in chic monochrome \u2014 navy trench, navy pants, a navy ascot at the neck of a navy shirt \u2014 he was gracious with them all, if lightly evasive. (And yes, he is the rare man who looks plausible in an ascot.) At 71, he doesn\u2019t often show the whole of himself. People see what they want. Mostly they see Bond.<\/p>\n \u201cThey miss a lot,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not up to me to show a lot. It\u2019s not up to me to do anything but be pleasant.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There has always been more to Brosnan than meets the eye, although what meets the eye is obviously very nice. \u201cHe is very fortunate in the genes department,\u201d said Tom Hardy<\/a>, his co-star on the new Paramount+ gangster series \u201cMobLand\u201d<\/a> said. Brosnan refers to it all as \u201cthe Celtic alchemy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A longtime painter and art enthusiast, Brosnan counts \u201cThe Thomas Crown Affair,\u201d<\/a> a 1999 art heist caper, as the favorite of his movies, mostly because he got to keep the paintings. So when promotional duties brought him to New York \u2014 he splits his time between Malibu and Hawaii \u2014 he squeezed in a museum visit.<\/p>\n On arrival, he found the Guggenheim spiral closed for installation. (\u201cThat\u2019s boring,\u201d he said mildly at the ticket counter.) He contented himself with the works on display. \u201cI love color,\u201d Brosnan said, admiring some canvases by the Brazilian painter Beatriz Milhazes<\/a>. \u201cExhilarating. Captivating.\u201d His speech has a casual lyricism \u2014 he\u2019ll rarely use a single adjective when two or three will do \u2014 but he seemed to mean it.<\/p>\n In his acting career, Brosnan\u2019s palette has been fairly particular. \u201cIt\u2019s been part of my story as an actor,\u201d he said. \u201cPlaying the hero, playing the mysterious man, playing the man that you trust.\u201d But his recent roles (and some that he has taken before: \u201cThe Matador,\u201d<\/a> \u201cThe Tailor of Panama\u201d<\/a>) complicate that persona.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Conrad, the criminal boss he plays in \u201cMobLand,\u201d harbors brutality underneath his gentlemanly wardrobe. Arthur, the British spy chief he animates in Steven Soderbergh\u2019s sleek espionage thriller \u201cBlack Bag,\u201d<\/a> now in theaters, has his complications, too. And yet, Brosnan is still and always Bond.<\/p>\n \u201cYou really can\u2019t get away from it,\u201d he said. Which at least partly explains why, half an hour into his visit, Naomi Beckwith<\/a>, the Guggenheim\u2019s chief curator, came to offer him a tour of the installation in progress. Then she introduced him to the artist behind it, Rashid Johnson<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a fan of yours,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cYou were my Bond.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n They chatted about art for a while. In 2023, Brosnan, who worked as a commercial artist in his teens, had his first show, \u201cSo Many Dreams,\u201d<\/a> at a Los Angeles gallery. He told Johnson what he liked about painting as opposed to acting: \u201cThe innocence of it all and no expectations.\u201d Then he said goodbye. \u201cBe bold,\u201d he urged Johnson.<\/p>\n Walking out, Brosnan admired a Bonnard, a C\u00e9zanne, several Picassos. He clocked a Kandinsky from all the way across the room. \u201cJust makes you want to paint,\u201d he said. He has fantasies of moving to Paris and apprenticing with some artist in an atelier. But he isn\u2019t ready to give up acting.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a drug now,\u201d he said. \u201cI need it.\u201d Though Brosnan is often very funny (\u201cHe\u2019s got a wicked sense of humor,\u201d Hardy said), it wasn\u2019t clear that he was joking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Certainly he hasn\u2019t quit yet. He shot his role in \u201cBlack Bag\u201d on a quick break from another film, \u201cGiant.\u201d He began work on \u201cMobLand,\u201d in which he stars opposite Helen Mirren, just after wrapping the movie \u201cThe Thursday Murder Club,\u201d also opposite Mirren.<\/p>\n \u201cBlack Bag\u201d returns him to the secret service. His character is a spymaster of oblique motivation. The movie plays homage to classic espionage films, which made Brosnan an attractive choice for the role.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a knowingness that is shared with the audience that\u2019s very pleasurable, a shared secret,\u201d Soderbergh said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Brosnan knows this, too. \u201cI was trusted to bring them in, to engage with the audience and then to dismantle that persona,\u201d he said. (A further bit of dismantling: He asked Soderbergh for a mild prosthetic for his nose, which sharpens his face).<\/p>\n He plays a similar game in \u201cMobLand,\u201d created by Ronan Bennett (\u201cTop Boy\u201d) and directed partly by Guy Ritchie. Conrad seems the consummate gentleman, but he\u2019s not above kicking a man when he\u2019s down \u2014 and wounded and bleeding from the mouth. As his wife, Maeve (Mirren) says, he is, beneath his dapper tweeds and Barbour, \u201ca stone-cold Paddy killer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Brosnan\u2019s portrayal makes that brutality engrossing. \u201cHe has what they call \u2018spell,\u2019\u201d Hardy said. \u201cHe casts a spell on the room.\u201d<\/p>\n This is true of Brosnan offscreen as well. His gallantry is profligate, effortless. In our time together, he held doors, he helped me with my coat, he called me darling. I knew I was being charmed. I was helpless to it. To spend these hours with him was to feel rammed by a tractor-trailer of sheer charisma.<\/p>\n And of course, I love Bond, too. When I wondered aloud why someone like me, who doesn\u2019t typically enjoy gun-forward films, should feel so drawn to the character, Brosnan looked at me wryly. \u201cSex,\u201d he said. \u201cSex. Sex. Sex. Love. Lust. Desire. Sex. That\u2019s just it. Own it. Enjoy it. Don\u2019t worry about it.\u201d (Asked about the sale of the Bond franchise to Amazon<\/a> earlier this year, he was more circumspect: \u201cI wish them well.\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This version of Brosnan \u2014 the curated wardrobe, the way he politely asked to have his lunchtime Chablis cooled (\u201cGive it some good ice, please,\u201d he said) \u2014 seemed authentic to him. \u201cI love clothes; I love style,\u201d he said. \u201cI love the beauty of life, of men, of women. The art of life, it feeds me.\u201d<\/p>\n But it is also a pose he has perfected over the years, one rooted at least in part in a childhood in Ireland that included abandonment by his father and a long separation from his mother.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI wanted to be an artist; I wanted to be a painter,\u201d he said. \u201cI had no qualifications. I was really behind the eight ball \u2014 without a mother, without a father.\u201d But that freedom allowed him to create, he said, \u201cthis persona for myself called Pierce\u201d that has become only more refined with wealth, fame and the realization of his artistic aspirations.<\/p>\n Pierce is arguably his greatest role and he has little ambivalence toward it or the celebrity it has afforded him.<\/p>\n \u201cI wished it; I wanted it,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I get on with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, he admitted, he was looking forward to the week\u2019s end, when he could be himself, not show himself. But what he shows, in person and onscreen, it\u2019s enough. For him, and maybe for the rest of us.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll keep playing it as long as it goes,\u201d he said. \u201cIt got me this far. I\u2019ll keep marching on.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n