The Matador - Pierce Brosnan interview
Compiled by Jack Foley
Q. You seem to have worked harder than any of your predecessors to keep from being typecast as James Bond. Has that always been easy to achieve?
A I was aware going into Bond that if I got it right I was going to be labelled as Bond, so I had to look ahead and try and carve a niche for myself outside of that role. So yeah, there was very much an awareness on my behalf. And when the success happened with GoldenEye, Beau St Clair and I formed a company to make films we liked. But the success of Bond has been bountiful to us as a company and to me as an actor.
Q. What research did you draw on for the character?
A. I found a wonderful woman in LA who was a criminal psychologist dealing with psychopaths. She read the script, broke it down and analysed him as she would any of her cases. After that I talked with her and read her notes.
Q. There are very real concerns about filming in Mexico City, aren’t there?
A. The great thing about making movies is going off on an adventure to far flung places whether it be Nigeria, or Panama or in this case Mexico City. So I was up for it and very jazzed for it. I was worried for my family, they were worried for me.
The week before we left there was a big article in the LA Times all about these kidnappings. So I tried to hide it from my wife and put it under the sofa, then Sunday afternoon the kids came and jumped on Dad on the sofa and my wife found the article. So there was a real, deep concern for my welfare. But the people down there embraced us, we embraced them back and there were no problems.”
Q. There was presumably a big advantage in taking those risks and shooting there, wasn’t there?
A. Mexico is a huge character in the film – we got all those other fabulous locations from it too, Arizona, Budapest, so it was palpable. Being in this city that has a kind of darkness to it, it made us kind of cluster together at the Camino Real Hotel and gave it a wonderful sense of community. There were no mishaps, although I had to change cars a couple of times when we had blow-outs for some unknown reason… three!
Q: What is your favourite scene in the movie?
A: There are so many. I love walking away from the Porsche and it blowing up. It was the first day’s work on a Sunday. The first scene was with the little boy and the second scene was with the Porsche. There we were making our movie in a residential neighbourhood, we had one Porsche body of a car and we had this huge explosion. We had children in the scene and we were all hoping it would be ok. I had to walk away and as the camera followed me it had to blow at the right time. And we only had one take. So that was great.
Q: What about the hotel reception scene?
A: The walking across the lobby! Loved it. It was funny. I wasn’t embarrassed. I have been an actor since I was 18 years of age and I have done crazy stuff before I ever came to this country. You wouldn’t believe it. You should have seen me in Puckaree, an Irish rock musical at the Edinburgh Festival in my wonderful rubber phallus running around the stage. That was a good one!
Q: In real life do you prefer margaritas or beer or whisky?
A: I like a beer. I did have a few whiskies filming out in Santa Fe because it is so bloody cold out there.
Q: Have you ever had the same relationships with women as Julian Noble has? Have you ever felt like using women the way he does?
A: No! God almighty, I have been a married man most of my life. That’s the way I like it. I get to go home to the most beautiful woman on the planet… lovely children and have a good, normal life and then I get to run off and play in the movies and do fantasy world.
Q: Who are you more like, Danny or Julian?
A: Danny. I don’t know the Julians of this world. I like to have a good normal life and good times. I wasn’t quite sure how to get into the world of Julian so I asked a friend of mine at the LAPD if he knew a criminal psychologist that I could speak to. I gave her the script and she did a breakdown on this psychopath. These men do exist, they are out in our society, they kill for money.
Q: Were roles like The Matador not offered to you earlier in your career… maybe because you are a fantastic looking man?
A: If someone else had been doing this movie I don’t think I would have been given the role. You kind of find yourself painted into a corner by your own personality, the choice you’ve made in playing the Bond role and underpinning that with Thomas Crown, which was deliberate conscious decision on my part to capitalise on such a ‘international persona’. In having your own company you get material and I think the business has changed now. If any actor has work and passion about it and they are not getting the work then it is up to them to create the work for themselves.
Q: What about Topkapi?
A: That is Thomas Crown 2 and we have taken The Topkapi Affair off the shelf. It is a heist movie much loved by movie buffs and we are using that as a blueprint but only in the first act and then we have embellished on it. It is a different theft, different heist, different woman but about a love affair. So we are trying… we are noodling it along. I enjoy producing and bringing people together and to have something like The Matador and this wonderful text and Hope Davis and Greg Kinnear… they worked beautifully together. We surrounded this young director Richard with the best people possible.
This interview is extracted from the London and New York press junkets for The Matador