Pierce Brosnan is in town for the film festival. Let's get the James Bond thing out of the way: "I'm gonna be him until I fall off the twig, one way or another, just like Sean is and Roger is," said the actor yesterday. "I had the time of my life with it. It allowed me to create a company, make my own films and make choices, and that's what any actor wants, to make choices."
Brosnan was James Bond four times. Everybody thought he would be Bond a fifth time, but it's not going to happen. Things change.
Is he tired of talking about it?
"Yeah. I've said it all already, and it's boring," he said, smiling. "I watch TV in my hotel room and see my fellow actors doing press conferences and I see us all trying to explain ourselves and I think, 'Oh, gawd. Don't let actors talk about their work'."
There you have it.
Brosnan was standing in an empty hotel restaurant woofing back pure oxygen from a canister as this interview began. Kind of a Blue Velvet moment, as the actor himself said.
"We had oxygen in Mexico City. Somebody sent us down cases of it -- it's a tough city to breathe in," said Brosnan, referring to one location on the shoot of The Matador, the film that has brought him to the Toronto Film Festival.
The Matador is the perfect movie for Brosnan to sever ties with the Bond franchise -- he plays a louche, sad, seedy professional assassin. In the film, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a mild-mannered businessman played by Greg Kinnear. Hope Davis also co-stars, as Kinnear's wife.
It's a buddy road picture, in a darkly humorous wacko sort of way, and just the thing to remind people that Brosnan has played much more than just a famous spy -- he starred in The Thomas Crown Affair, The Tailor Of Panama, Dante's Peak, Laws Of Attraction, After The Sunset and dozens of other films.
Brosnan said yesterday that he was tired and keen to get home to his wife and his two youngest children, who are 4 and 8 years old. The actor was able to take a year off after filming The Matador, and he liked being home with his kids.
"It's a great luxury for any parent to have," he said. "I'd reached a point of mild saturation with myself and performance and film and constructing and destroying. Not that I do it to any great degree -- all my performances have been close to who I am, kind of, but after Matador and that experience, I took time off."
He described Julian, his Matador character, as "a flamboyant vulgarian, a sad, pathetic moronic hit man," and laughed. He really does play a creep. So far, audiences are loving the peformance.
And Brosnan is so good in the role you can tell what his character smells like. And how about that seedy little moustache? "Well, his sexuality certainly comes into play," said Brosnan, grinning. "He's trisexual -- he'll try anything."
Truth is, Brosnan said he had a crisis of confidence once The Matador started coming together.
"I jumped ship," he said, cheerfully. The actor got cold feet thinking he would alienate his entire audience, "Because it's such an audacious piece, with such shock value, and me playing centre stage. So we sat down and looked at what was grieving me. Once they'd listened to my insecurities and grumbling and my mild panic attack, I got over it. I stopped whining and whingeing and said, 'Let's do it.'"
