Pierce Brosnan finds his niche

[Blowfeld]

Seeing Remember Me, which opens Friday, fresh on the heels of The Ghost Writer, which opened in much of the country over the past two weeks, I am struck by one thing.

Pierce Brosnan has found his post-Bond niche.

It took him a while. He did arty films and musical films (the only Irishman in the world who can’t carry a tune), grew beards, played this or that – caper crooks and hit-men.

But what he’s best at is what he plays in both these films. He all but steals Ghost Writer, and he chews it up in Remember Me. Nobody, nobody is better at being a perfectly coiffed, how can I put this? Rhymes with “crick.”

A shallow, handsome, thin-skinned prime minister who can turn on the smile with the same speed he can turn on you, he is dazzling in Ghost Writer. In Remember Me, he’s a dapper Wall Street tycoon too self-absorbed to see how his selfishness is impacting his nearly-estranged kids (Robert Pattinson plays his pierce1son), Brosnan wears the suit well (he always has) and keeps that prickly demeanor in check when he needs to, and occasionally lets its show to his cowed subordinates and confrontational son.

Surprising turns? To SOME people, maybe.Those of us who have interviewed Brosnan and gotten on his bad side have seen this mercurial shift, first hand. It’s chilling. Dark. Ugly. (See below the page-break, a Toronto interview I had with him once.)

We knew he had it in him. Now, happily, he’s found a way to use that on the big screen.

TORONTO — You’ve seen the look in too many James Bond films. It’s that withering, contemptuous stare that Pierce Brosnan drills into villains.

Or reporters.

“Been a journalist long, Roger?”

It’s usually delivered in a posh restaurant, or over the baccarat tables in Monte Carlo, in between martinis that are never, ever stirred.

Today, it’s leveled in the bar of Toronto’s Hotel Intercontinental — posh, but not A-list. That’s the Four Seasons. Down the street. Where Orlando Bloom, Charlize Theron and the like are staying.

Twenty minutes into a difficult interview that should have ended at 15 . . . and the gloves are off. He has had a few days of coaxing journalists away from his last job and into talking about his current one. He’s tired of talking about “Bond . . . James Bond” and wants to talk about The Matador.

Except that he can’t. The guy has been fired from the best job in the world — playing Bond — and people won’t let him forget it. He has to figure out how to have that Sean Connery post-Bond career, not Timothy Dalton-George Lazenby-Roger Moore oblivion.

Even softball questions about “plans” and “dream projects” draw sighs and scowls when the guy asking the questions is named . . . Roger Moore. As in the guy who had no career once he stopped being James Bond.

“What can I say? Ask another question.”

It didn’t start this way. Nooo. A quick introduction from a helpful publicist leads to a quip: “Roger Moore? Timothy Dalton.”

The world loves a guy who can laugh at himself, and Brosnan seems ready. In future months, he would parry the Bond question on the red carpet at the Golden Globes with a self-effacing “I’ve had my time in the sun.”

But not today. Salt-and-pepper beard neatly coifed, in sports jacket and jeans, the star was truly fed up with some rube from Orlando who was doing, the rube thought, a decent job of hiding how lukewarm he was on Brosnan’s first post-Bond outing, The Matador.

“I don’t think you’re really interested. I think you’re so happy with your own kind of words and verbiage, I don’t think you really want to know,” says Brosnan.

We’ve already chatted about how much he enjoyed working with Greg Kinnear, about knowing “the field work” of a hit man, his character in The Matador, from his years as Bond.

“It’s just a genre piece, like a romantic comedy or a Western,” Brosnan says. “There’s something fascinating about the man who has to live this solitary life and co-exists alongside normal humanity, but actually goes out with a rifle or a knife or a bottle of poison and takes someone’s life, for, what, a couple of thousand bucks?”

Brosnan, 52, worked steadily in comedies and caper pictures while he was Bond. He has five movies in the works, including a remake/updating of Topkapi, engineered as a sequel to the Thomas Crown Affair. He’s going to be fine. Just stop reminding him, even inadvertently, that he’s not Bond.

“It’ll all be over soon, the questions,” he sighs and runs his hand, annoyed, through that perfect head of hair.

Change the subject.

Topkapi: “We’re not doing a remake, as such. We’re just using the title as a jumping-off point, just that diamond itself, as a kind of Trojan horse into the piece.”

The career: “Dreams and aspirations? Many, bountiful. Passion for the work? Constantly ongoing.”

Maybe this is the clue, 11 minutes in.

“Roger Moore,” Brosnan chuckles, rubbing his chin and shaking his head. “I’m sitting here talking with a guy named Roger [bleeping] Moore.”

Wait’ll he finds out I’m from Orlando.

“I love Roger Moore.”

Whoa. What?

A human moment, a letting down of the guard.

“Only man in my life I ever asked for an autograph,” Brosnan muses. “Mind you, I was about 12 years old. Battersea Park. Long time ago.”

He catches himself.

“What publication are you with?”

This story can be found at http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entert ... niche.html