PASADENA, Calif. _ It's hard to believe, but the man we know as the dashing James Bond once cleaned kitchens for a living. Pierce Brosnan, who insinuated himself on a grateful public as 007 in four Bond movies, also toiled in a plastic bottles factory. "I worked as a laborer digging roads with my fellow Irishmen," he adds over breakfast in a sunny patio cafe here.
"We'd get up at 4:30 in the morning, get into an old bus _ a bunch of paddies who were completely inebriated still from the night before _ and go dig ditches, with Chekhov in my back pocket," he says.
He still has Chekhov in his back pocket as well as some sort of special grit. In spite of enormous tragedy in his life, Brosnan prevails with what he calls "the luck of the Irish."
Following the death of his first wife, Cassie, and his adopted daughter, Charlotte, from ovarian cancer, last year Brosnan lost his longtime producing partner, Beau St. Claire, another victim of cancer.
He and his current wife, Keely Shaye, suffered a fire at their Malibu home in which the book Brosnan was reading went up in flame. But that book has survived in another form as Brosnan's next role on television.
On April 8 he'll star in AMC's 10-part saga, "The Son," based on Philipp Meyer's engrossing novel about six generations of the McCulluoch family in Texas. Brosnan plays the patriarch of the clan, who is torn as he watches the landscape he's known erode.
Though change has been a constant in his life, Brosnan has learned to thrive on it. He was separated from his mother for five years as a kid when she moved to England to become a nurse.
While he attended Catholic school in Ireland he was abused by his Christian Brothers teachers, he recalls. "They would make you bend over and cane you. I had slaps on the hand, thumps on the head, kicks in the backside, while or during or after saying the 'Our Father' by some Christian Brother who didn't get out much and had no sensibility of humanity. Thank God for acting because when I discovered acting, I discovered this wonderful world," he says.
He reconnected with his mother at 11 when he joined her in England. He was bullied there at school because he was an outsider. "Trying to fit in then in 1964 in the English comprehensive school system was not easy," he smiles.
"So being the token Irish lad was not easy. There was a certain discrimination, and I was the butt of quite a few jokes. They could never find the way to say my name or couldn't say my name, or didn't want to say the name, 'Pierce,' so I was known as 'Irish' throughout my years. And I wore that as a badge and an emblem of great dignity. I liked the mystique of it. You learn at an early age to roll with the punches and find your way through the day (with) a sense of humor," he says.
Fisticuffs were part of it, he says. "You had to defend yourself, so you had to land the first punch and you had to be pretty fast and swift. But I was not a fighter, I was really not. But I had to defend myself. I got in trouble early on at school over a girl because I liked this particular girl. ... She was a lovely girl, but this other fellow made fun of her, so I clocked him.
"And then they took me away to give me six of the best. But I was already used to being hit by the Christian Brothers and getting the snot kicked out of you by these holy men. But it didn't bother me so I backed into this persona of being a hard man."
Being a "hard man" and maintaining his deep faith have fortified him, he says. "I was brought up a Catholic. I still have that faith. It's a strong sense of prayer and higher self, higher order, higher ground, and to try and prevail. I think that's it, really. The loss of Cassie the loss of Charlotte has been profound. The loss of Beau St. Claire, my partner last year was deeply felt, the sorrow of those three women. The Irish upbringing of Catholic faith, that for me has been a source of comfort and renewal and strength and support and taking care of those around you who are falling maybe asunder."
Through the ups and downs of his career, Brosnan says he never wanted to quit. "There have been many moments of self doubt, that gasp of breath at four in the morning where you go, 'Where am I going? What am I doing? What have I done?' Sure, it's not all easy greasy. I used to read things (about myself). I don't read anything anymore about myself. They like me, they don't like me, they turn me on, they turn me off. I just do the best job I can, show up on time, know your lines, be gracious to everyone, and have a fine old time of it. It's such a gift to be able to do this and be at the table."
'PRISON BREAK' GETS A REPRIEVE
Fox's "Prison Break" gets a break and returns as a nine-part "event series" on April 4. This is not an unending 22-episode marathon, but a tidy and compact tale that will keep audiences wondering, says its executive producer Paul T. Scheuring.
The idea of returning came from the show's two stars, Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell � though Miller's character was supposed to have died when the first season ended. But finding a time when all the original cast would be free to film was a gigantic logistic problem, says Scheuring.
"It was really amazing this production came together at all ... all of these actors have gone on to varied careers. They are in demand everywhere, and they are all working on different shows, and they have all of this different stuff going on. And somehow we have got to get all of them to overlap all at once to shoot this thing, and so somehow Fox pulled it (off) ... And you have to understand, again, just kind of the incredible effort that went into making this thing was we had simultaneous crews midseason shooting _ one in Morocco and a whole full crew shooting in Vancouver at the same time ... It was just absolutely a million plates in the air and a massive headache, but at the end of the day, it kind of all came up aces."
'HARLOTS' ARRIVES ON HULU
Hulu never follows the primrose path and focuses instead on off-center projects. The latest is "Harlots," which begins streaming Wednesday. It's a historical pastiche about the working girls of 1760s England. Moira Bufini, who wrote the series, says she pored over historical documents to resuscitate these ladies of the night.
"We historically researched this to the nth degree," she says. "We were inspired by a book called 'Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies,' which was a sort of London guide to whoring that was a best-seller yearly from the 1760s up to the 1800s ...
"There are several editions of it still existing in various libraries. And the language of this book is so stunning. My friend Alison Newman brought it to me. She said, 'You've got to read this. You've got to tell these women's stories.' A good review (in the book) would be something like 'Her bosom enhanced a rapture,' and you'd get two paragraphs detailing exactly how beautiful a woman was. And then a bad review would be something like, 'She's a smirking, lecherous hussy; in short, a vile b_.'
"There's dominatrixes and gosh, there's every kind of peccadillo you can imagine in 'Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies,' all written about in beautiful Georgian English."
KATIE HOLMES BACK AS JACKIE
Katie Holmes is back in Jackie Kennedy's pill box hat in the four-episode sequel, "The Kennedys: After Camelot" coming to Reelz on Sunday. Of all the costuming, hairstyling, and jewelry she wore to emulate the former first lady, Holmes says it was a wrist watch that really enhanced her performance.
"She had this very distinct black leather Cartier watch, and we got a vintage one. And there is something so classic about that, and so embodied her style _ understated, but elegant. And just putting that on every day, it was of a certain time, and I felt that sort of elegance of her," says Holmes.
