Thanks. I thought I posted this link before, guess not. Sorry. Too bad it can't be saved. He sits just like his father.
There's a 2 page interview with him this week in
The Daily Mail (Er... well at least it's not
The Mirror or
The Sun). The large photo is the one of him and Pierce from the mid 90s in a hammock.
08/06/2006
DAILY MAIL
Sean Brosnan is currently playing in Romeo And Juliet, and he performs Shakespeare's tragic hero with stunning emotion. As well he might, for Sean knows death, and is no stranger to tragedy or the loss of great love, either.
Sean, the son of James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan, was just eight years old when his beloved mother, Cassandra, died of ovarian cancer. Today he has her name tattooed on his shoulder and a lipstick kiss from her in a journal he kept as a little boy.
He is 23 now, and talks of his mother poignantly, believing that her death has shaped his life. It has shaped that of his brother, Chris, and sister, Charlotte, too - Cassandra's children from an earlier marriage to actor Dermot Harris, brother of film star Richard Harris.
Chris, 32, a contestant on TV's Love Island, is a recovering cocaine and heroin addict.
Charlotte, 33, also spent much of her 20s in and out of rehab clinics.
Sean himself was an angry, rebellious loner. Expelled from numerous schools in his native California, he was sent to public school in England, where he was suspended for punching another boy.
At 16, he almost died in a road accident after the truck he was in careered off the road - forcing his father to postpone his wedding to his current wife, Keely Shaye Smith. For six months, Sean had to lie flat on his back and was warned he might never walk again.
'Being on my back helped me to work things out emotionally, because I wasn't able to physically hide from things,' he says. 'I gave Dad a lot of trouble when I was growing up. I refused to visit my mum in hospital on her birthday - and it was to be her last.
'Because she was sick and couldn't come and play with me in the pool, I thought she didn't want to see me, so I wouldn't see her. Not going to see her on her birthday hurt me, but I did it because I was angry. I always felt bad about that.
'Years later, all that time I spent in hospital myself made me confront my anger. I had to let it go.' I'm with Sean in Nottingham, the latest stop in the Romeo And Juliet tour. He says he prefers theatre to Hollywood, having loathed his Irish-born father's celebrity as a child.
'Having James Bond as a father was tough,' he says. 'I never knew who was a real friend, or who just wanted to know me because of my father. That's why I'm doing theatre instead of going off to do a teen movie and jumping into the Hollywood whirlpool.' Sean looks like a young clone of his father, but disguises this beneath a hat, sunglasses and tatty jeans. He says hospital made him strong; made him realise he was a good person.
He broke his ankles, wrists and four ribs in the crash, as well as suffering a punctured lung, a ruptured bladder, a shattered pelvis, injuries to his stomach, a dislocated back, a broken coccyx and damaged small intestine (doctors had to remove four feet of it). He was not expected to live, let alone walk. 'The doctor said there was a chance I'd walk, but it would take a lot of work,' he says. 'So I thought, "I'm going to walk". It never occurred to me that I wouldn't - but try walking and moving every day with broken bones. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.' Pierce was by his son's bedside every day in the immediate weeks after the crash. Sean says his dad has a terrible temper, and he thought he'd kill him. He now says his father is a 'very close friend. We've been through too much not to be friends,' he says.
Sean was four when his mother's cancer was diagnosed. Her illness and the threat of her death defined his childhood. 'I remember knowing Mummy was sick but not knowing why. She was losing her hair and couldn't come out in the garden. That frustrated me because I didn't understand why. We always used to go swimming and then she couldn't one day - and never did again. I used to think, "Being sick only lasts a couple of days, not all year".
'One of the nicer memories I've held on to is lying in bed with her when I was eight. I was drawing pictures and she was meditating. We'd watch movies, too. By then, she had no hair and was really skinny. It was just before she died.' The bad memories he tries to shut out: the hospitals, the pain. 'She was in agony,' he says.
'I remember her screaming and holding her stomach - rushing to hospital in the middle of the night; people coming to pick me up at 3am and staying at Dad's friends' houses.
'Dad stayed with her in hospital once for two weeks when she was having chemo, and I stayed at this guy's house. I felt so homesick; it was the first time I'd stayed away from home.
I was about six and remember saying, "I hate you, God. You're not my friend any more."' Sean says he never cried as a child. 'My mother was so strong. She tried not to let it affect the children.
Because she always put on a brave face, I thought that that's what you did if you were in pain. As a little boy I never really cried, but I had one hell of a temper - though I just kept it in. Instead, I'd refuse to eat or speak.'
Sean didn't even shed a tear when, a few days after Christmas, he was told his mother had died. Instead, he comforted his father. Sean was staying with his brother and sister's famous uncle, Richard Harris, at the time. 'Richard used to walk around in tracksuit bottoms and a stained T-shirt drinking pints of Guinness,' says Sean, 'but he was great with kids.
'We were still opening presents and I remember being called in. Richard said, "Your father wants to see you in the bedroom," and gave me a kiss on the forehead. I walked into the room and remember Dad crying. He said, "Mummy's in Heaven now with God." I said, "That's okay, Pierce suffered dreadfully after his wife's death. 'My dad was very lonely,' he says. 'He went from being Dad to being Mum and Dad.
But he also had to keep working and my brother and sister were at school in England, so I had a nanny to look after me.' He says he hated it when his father started seeing other women again. 'My dad would introduce me to his new girlfriend and say, "We're going to dinner, okay?" Again, I didn't talk.
There'd be embarrassing silences.' He began to rebel at school. 'I'd do everything from smoking to vandalising, to refusing to work or talk. I guess I did it to get Dad's attention.' When he was 15 his exasperated father sent him to board at Millfield School in Somerset. 'I got in more trouble there than anywhere else,' he says. 'It was such a culture shock. I went from being a California beach bum to wearing a tie every morning, having to wear shoes and being called a Yank.' One Easter break, he arranged for a Millfield friend to spend a week with him in Los Angeles. The accident happened on the final night. 'We were driving back from a friend's party and we went up to the Devil's Backbone, a huge hill that looks out over LA where all the kids race cars. We sat up there, had three or four beers, and, on the way back, as we drove round a curve in the road, we went over a 250ft cliff.
'It happened in slow motion. We went head over heels and I was thrown out. I hit the ground and the truck rolled over me. I remember feeling squashed. I couldn't breathe.
'I got up and tried to walk, but both my ankles were broken. I was at the bottom of a ravine, struggling to breathe. I thought, "I'm going to die". I was too busy trying to stay alive to be scared. Then I believe I heard my mother's voice. She said, "Everything is going to be okay. Just keep breathing."
Eventually a helicopter airlifted me out.
They told me, "Your dad's here." I said, "Oh God, if this doesn't kill me, he will." He'd got a phone call at 3am from my friend James, who had been driving the truck.
'I just remember seeing his face, then they gave me the oxygen. I woke up two weeks later. Dad was there, looking grey. I felt so bad.' While in hospital, Sean lost five stone. He was in excruciating pain and felt isolated and alone, despite the presence of people who loved him.
'I realised that we're all alone, really. You've got to learn to deal with yourself and your own company. I'd always beaten myself up for not having friends. And having a dad who's a megastar kind of makes you feel less It's hard to explain - no one looks at the cute little kid anymore.
Realising that the only person you've got to depend on is yourself made me strong.' Back in England, he tried to show Chris - who, in happier times, had dressed him up in Batman outfits - how to be strong, too.
'I went from being the little brother to the big brother,' he says. 'Chris was my legal guardian when I was at boarding school. He started doing heroin, and lolling in front of the TV. I'd think, "What the hell's wrong with you?"
'I was angry at him, and disappointed. I wondered how he could be so weak.
But now he's been clean for a year and says he'll always remember the day when, in his eyes, I was no longer a kid. He was high on heroin and I was trying to put him to bed. He said, "I don't need your help." I said, "I'm the big brother now.
You're going to bed." And he did.
Earlier this year I told him not to do Love Island,' Sean continues. 'I think it's tacky. But he needed the money and what better way to earn it than on an island with six beautiful women? I think he'll stay clean now. He's been at rock bottom. He was killing himself. He overdosed. He was living in a crack house, with the wrong sort of people - stealing, taking money off me and other people.' Single himself after two lengthy relationships and now living in London, Sean says he's pleased his father has remarried. 'Yeah,' he says. 'My stepmother can be quite bossy, but that's okay with me. She and Dad love each other and get along great. I like her. I suppose, when they got together, I felt things had changed. My brother, my sister and I were in England. Dad and Keely had a son [Dylan, nine], then a second [Paris, five].
We were spending less and less time going over to see them and it just felt like a chapter was over.' Sean is due on stage soon and must prepare.
He says, 'It's nerve-racking every time I get up there. I always felt that people came to watch me fail rather than succeed, and I still do. But when you're the son of someone famous, it comes with the package - like being asked if you want your drink shaken not stirred.' Now he's playing Romeo in his professional-theatre debut and he says his father is really proud of him.
He smiles again, and shrugs, 'I feel so lucky. I know it sounds corny, but I do.' And his mother? 'I talk to her every day,' he says. 'She's constantly with me.' I'm later told, not by Sean, that before every performance he prays to Cassandra for strength.
I'm sure that she, too, is enormously proud of her son.
Romeo And Juliet is at Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds, until August 20. Visit
www.british shakespearecompany.com
Copyright © 2006 Daily Mail. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.