Today, 16 May 2016, is Pierce Brendan Brosnan's 63rd birthday.
The fifth man to portray James Bond 007 in the EON Productions film franchise (from 1995 to 2004), the Irish actor has also appeared in a Danish feature film. He played the co-lead opposite Trine Dyrholm in Susanne Bier's romantic dramedy "Love is All You Need" from 2012. And by the way, the original Danish title, "Den skaldede frisør", translates as "The Bald-headed Hairdresser".
"Love is All You Need" premiered at the Venice Film Festival that same year. I seized the opportunity to interview Pierce Brosnan – twice, in fact. An intimate two-to-one conversation was followed by a larger session with an international group of journalists. And yes, I shook his hand, which in James Bond terms makes three for six (I've also met Daniel Craig and George Lazenby).
Sadly, the year after this interview was conducted, Pierce Brosnan and Cassandra Harris' daughter, Charlotte Brosnan, died from cancer at the age of 42.
INTERVIEW WITH PIERCE BROSNAN, "LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED"
From Bond to Bier
Brian Iskov for Dagbladenes Bureau, September 2012
Working with Susanne Bier and her Danish ensemble of actors became a happy release for Pierce Brosnan after the straightjacket that was James Bond 007. Playing a cancer widower in Bier's romantic comedy ”Love is All You Need”, the Irish movie star drew on his own life experience
VENICE, ITALY – ”Tak” [thanks]. "Tusind tak" [thanks a lot]. And "du er smuk" [you are beautiful].
During his tenure as Agent 007 James Bond, Pierce Brosnan killed [Danish actor, ed.] Ulrich Thomsen and took private lessons in "Scandinavian tongues" with Danish model Cecilie Thomsen. But when we meet Brosnan during the Venice Film Festival in 2012, the Irish-born gent freely admits to a Danish vocabulary limited to the three phrases mentioned above.
No wonder that the then 59-year-old actor felt apprehensive when he ventured to Copenhagen in 2011 to prepare for his first lead ever in a Danish motion picture: ”Love is All You Need” (Den skaldede frisør) directed by Academy Award winner Susanne Bier.
– I was worried about my participation in it, am I gonna rock the boat? I was very nervous that I would take people out of the movie. Also, the actors all had such close proximity to each other. They've grown up together and been friends, lovers, whatever, Pierce Brosnan says.
– Someone like Kim Bodnia has powerful force. You look across the table at the dude, and he's gonna come at you. But he's funny!
Brosnan needn't have worried. From day one, everyone on the Danish film crew welcomed their colleague from abroad with open arms.
– I came into a tribe where I was cared for, nurtured, and laughed at in the best possible way for trying to speak the language, Pierce Brosnan says in his soft-spoken brogue.
– Luckily, the character [a British businessman living in Denmark, ed.] lent himself to this. I believed that [my character] could run this fruit company and never really got the hang of this Danish, always asking my secretary, "what are they saying?". The conceit, I think, was well founded.
