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Post by Lauryn on Oct 10, 2006 23:09:01 GMT -5
True, he got into the profession sort of sideways, not from any lifelong desire to that point. Of course, a lot of good, dedicated actors have that same trajectory, but there always seemed to be a part of him that was hanging back, and keeping a certain distance, if his interviews can be believed he could take it or leave it.
I remember about the time of "The Mosquito Coast" where he played an unsympathetic character (and not too badly) and the audience, in the main, wanted nothing to do with it, but that was decades ago, and no real excuse, nor should it have half as much the relevance to any path he could take now.
I knew he famously turned down "Traffic" -- seemed to go out of his way to find fault with the script as I remember, and the whisper was it was symptomatic of a failure of nerve. I didn't know he was seriously offered "Syriana." That one was not as meaty of a role as its press would lead you to expect, but Ford could have been fine enough in it. (IMO, The Best Supporting Oscar pick from that film should have gone to Alexander Siddig.)
This is what I really don't get, that is, if the desire is truly there . HF could slip gracefully into geezerhood with only minor tweaking to his screen persona. Even in his youth he was fairly rugged, not an Orlando Bloom fuzz-cheeked ingenue, or later made his mark playing jet setting, ever youthful playboy types.
Of course, the gossip is that Ford is aping Tracy in at least one respect, and staring at life through the bottom of a few too many shotglasses of Scotch.
He had talked about, as a boy, going to to the local pictures in Navan and the features being generally in black and white. Perhaps Spencer Tracy, being a transplanted Irishman, was popular on the bill.
<Is the site reaallly slow, or is it just my connection? I lost my post and had to re-type it. Oy!>
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Post by londonstreet on Oct 12, 2006 4:59:30 GMT -5
I find Pierce remembering his granddad's favourite actor interesting too, and sooo sweet. Lauryn, guess you're right about the local pictures....I remember him saying that too and also something about his graddad telling Pierce to harry up 'cause he didn't want to miss the movie. Then I also think that in Ireland in the 50s and 60s very few people had the tv at home, there was the same situation here and my gradparents had their first b&w tv in the late 70s.
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Post by Ace on Oct 13, 2006 14:42:58 GMT -5
Speaking of some of PB's favorite films this article from the Wall Street JournalHit List: Brosnan's Adventure The former James Bond on his favorite action filmsBy LORETTA CHAO January 14, 2006 Pierce Brosnan, best known for his four-film reign as British secret agent James Bond, says he has developed a deep appreciation for action and adventure films over the years. "I've seen behind the curtain, seen the technicality of how they work," he says. Recently, the Irish-born actor, who played detective Remington Steele on television in the 1980s and went on to appear in thrillers like "The Thomas Crown Affair," has been exploring different types of roles. He's up for a Golden Globe award for his comedic performance as a hit man with a midlife crisis in "The Matador." But he still enjoys escaping into a good action film. We asked him to choose some of his favorites. * * * The Wild Bunch (1969) Mr. Brosnan was riveted by the slow-motion fight scenes in this violent Sam Peckinpah Western. "Peckinpah did something which was so obvious, and beautiful, and brutal at the same time," he says. * * * Die Hard (1988) "I wish I'd been in those movies," Mr. Brosnan says of the film series that made Bruce Willis an action star. He liked the way director John McTiernan "built the physical brutality of what was happening to this guy," and the way Mr. Willis expressed his character's agony. * * * Die Xue Shuang Xion (The Killer, 1989) Made by Hong Kong director John Woo before he crossed into Hollywood films, "The Killer," features Mr. Woo's signature touches, like double-handed shoot-outs. "It was just pumping. It was just visceral," Mr. Brosnan says. Chow Yun Fat stars as an assassin intent on completing a final mission before retiring. * * * The Great Escape (1963) Mr. Brosnan considers Steve McQueen a "cinematic hero." He loves McQueen's legendary motorcycle chase scene in this John Sturges World War II classic about POWs planning to break out of an "escape-proof" prison camp. * * * The Guns of Navarone (1961) This World War II film, directed by J. Lee Thompson, is a favorite of Mr. Brosnan's for Gregory Peck's performance and for "the camaraderie of all the players in it," he says. The film is "big, old fashioned, and yet when I saw it, it was not old fashioned," Mr. Brosnan says.
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Post by Ace on Oct 22, 2006 3:25:54 GMT -5
Hah, I found that Lizzie Spender interview. Here it is in it's entirety even though just one paragraph is about PB (and another from People I inserted where she used a similiar description)
The kindness of famous friends
09/25/2005 THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT (IRELAND) IT CAN be difficult to interview the relatives of very famous people who have something to sell. On the one hand, you must pander to their egotistical image of themselves and their latest venture as inherently interesting, while at the same time asking the question thateveryone wants to know: what's it really like living with a star?
At first, Lizzie Spender, wife of legendary Australian comic Barry Humphries, doesn't really seem willing to play the game. She gives a tight, forced smile and looks away as she speaks. "I'm not married to one of the most famous women in the world," is her clipped response. "I'm married to an actor who plays a particular role. The public sees Dame Edna, I see Barry. Can we please go back to talking about the book."
So it's not true that she suggested that Dame Edna dress a bit more demurely, like Laura Bush. "No." Silence. "That's inaccurate."
"Oh, possum," I'm imagining 'the other woman' clucking mischievously, "don't be such a ninnie. I'm only trying to shine some of my star power and wit on you."
It's a strange misunderstanding of the way these things work, for looking further back in her life, Lizzie, a sometime actress and writer, is loquacious on the subject of connections and class. And she had piles of both. She is the daughter of Stephen Spender, the celebrated poet and close friend of WH Auden, and as a child she spent every summer in Galway with Anjelica Huston (with whom she has remained friends to this day) and her family.
"It was a wonderful start and I realise I was privileged. We went with the Hustons to the theatre twice a week. I had wanted to be an actor since I saw Peter O'Toole [one of their neighbours] in Hamlet. When I was 17, I told my parents, and they said, "Great, let's call Larry" - Laurence Olivier - "and find out which is the best drama school, and let's call Peggy" - Peggy Ashcroft - "and find out which are the best set pieces to do for auditions. And a week later I was practising my set pieces with her!"
At the time, John Huston would tell Anjelica, who was then modelling in America, that she should, like Lizzie, go to drama school in England. "But then," Lizzie remembers wistfully, but without bitterness, "she had the career, andI didn't."
Lizzie's problem, according to one director, was that she was "too tall and too blonde". What might have been a blessing in real life was a cross to bear in the theatre.
"I wasn't fashionable. When I was starting out, they wanted actresses of uniform height and weight. Stars like Vanessa Redgrave and Peter O'Toole had begun calling the shots and the directors didn't like this, so they had these rules about uniformity. There were all these silly expressions like, 'you mustn't be taller than the leading man'. Then they found that audiences were bored by uniform casts. Actresses like Nicole Kidman and Sigourney Weaver came along, but by then it was a bit late for me."
And so Lizzie abandoned her dream of becoming anactress, and over the next 10 years took a variety of jobs. "I worked as a journalist witha teen magazine, interviewing people like Freddie Mercury before anyone had heard of him."
She eventually quit journalism because "it felt dishonest". "It was teaching me a cute style. I felt [that] I came and saw one day, and wrote the piece the next day and still knew nothing about the subject. With fiction, you can be more evocative, without worrying too much about the details," she said.
While Virgin was still in its infancy, she began working for a young Richard Branson. "It was utterly chaotic. Ihad hippies sleeping under my desk. I thought Branson was a complete lunatic. I never imagined for one second he'd go on to become such a huge success."
Older and wiser, she decided to go back to drama school. "It was very tough for me. The teachers were very harsh and I wasn't very confident and that shone through. When I look back at my performances I can see I was paralysed by nerves. I felt I wasn't able for it."
Others had more of a sense of entitlement. "I remember being in a play with Natasha Richardson. She thought she was doing them a favour by playing the role, whereas I was just delighted to be acting at all."
Pierce Brosnan also attended drama school with Lizzie, and she remembers him as being "less blow-dried than the Pierce we know today, but also a great actor, the best of the bunch. I don't think he's called upon to extend himself as much today. With stardom people go down a road and then become insecure about extending themselves and trying new things."
[People Magazine 11/2001: Deciding to focus on acting, he enrolled in London’s prestigious Drama Centre. Lizzie Spender, now married to Australian comedian Barry Humphries (better known as Dame Edna Everage), was a classmate. “He wasn’t the blow-dried Pierce we know now,” she says. “He wasn’t as thin as he is now, and I don’t think his teeth were quite as straight. But he has always had that fundamental attractiveness and power onstage. We all went to him for a hug when we were feeling down.”]
She left drama school again and wrote a series of pasta cookbooks, which sold well, and also had some success writing for television. "Ihad two TV series, one, Hedgehog Wedding, was a hugesuccess, and the other, These Foolish Things was a complete disaster."
In 1988, she met Barry Humphries at a Groucho Club party. He called her a few years later when he was, in his words, "in a less married state". She is disarmingly frank about the age gap between them - he is 71, she is 55, but looks younger.
"Well, if you think of all my father figures they all have something different; my actual father, a poet and intellectual; John Huston, who was theatrical, larger than life, in show business and who wore wonderful Irish linen suits; the composer Gian Carlo Menotti. And what's so special is that Barry combines all my father figures, all those images, in one person. Your adult life is greatly formed by your childhood images."
One childhood image that has stayed with Lizzie her whole life was that of WH Auden giving her father a cheque to buy her a much longed-for horse. "It wasn't enough money and we weren't able to get the horse," she remembers ruefully.
Nearly 50 years later, on a helicopter flight over the outback of Australia, she saw a wild horse and returned on a mission finally to get for herself what neither her father nor Auden could give her.
The story forms the basis of her memoir, Wild Horse Diaries. "I was trying to write a novel but then this story sort of overtook me," she tells me. "I went to see a friend who was dying of cancer and it really put things in perspective for me. I realised, life's too short to sit around wondering about these things. I had inherited some money from my aunt - a white-haired spinster - and I thought, 'why not?' It's basically an archetypal quest, and I think it's kind of universal. So many people of my age have reared their children and worked all their lives and now they need to do something for themselves spiritually."
She sees irony in the fact that her father, who died 10 years ago, would have delighted in the publication of this book but had little time for her love of horses. "He encouraged me to write, but he couldn't understand my passion for horses. In fact, it probably came from the other side of the family. His cousins, the Schusters, were hunting people. My great aunt Gwen hunted side-saddle until she was 84."
Just as in her youth, she had encouragement from some famous friends. "I was in the middle of it all when I mentioned the story to my good friend Armistead Maupin. He went quite pale in that way that writers do when you've had an idea they wish they'd thought of, and said, 'That will be a good book.' I said, 'What if I don't catch the horse?' He said, 'It doesn't matter, it'll be a good book anyway.' Another of my dear San Francisco friends, Amy Tan, has also been very supportive."
It's exactly this type of self-promotional name-dropping that makes me wonder why a certain purple-haired, horn-rimmed glasses-wearing matron cannot be roped into the PR effort. But then, perhaps as Edna is apparently "in litigation" with Lizzie's husband and treats him as an irritating cyber, she would not have made herself available for the book tour.
When I try delicatelyto make this point to Lizzie, she theatrically wincesand lowers her voice as if a particularly difficult mother-in-law were waiting in the next room and possibly listening at the door.
"Don't even say it," she giggles, momentarily softening on the subject of that unmentionable other woman. "She can be very difficult. She tends to dominate things."
Wild Horse Diaries, by Lizzie Spender, is published by John Murray publishers, 30. Donal Lynch
Copyright © 2005 The Sunday Independent. Source : Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire
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Post by icyvice on Nov 1, 2006 9:09:00 GMT -5
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Post by icyvice on Sept 3, 2007 9:23:11 GMT -5
Saw these old interviews over at Youtube. Wondered if they have been posted before. Jonathan Ross November 2004 - Part 1 Part 2 Parkinson - The Madonna - Like A Virgin bit
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Post by Ace on Sept 3, 2007 10:15:59 GMT -5
They're new links (again from the great brioni!). Thanks I think Chayna transcribed the Ross interview when it came out but I haven't sen it before. Ace
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Post by Ace on Oct 22, 2007 11:37:58 GMT -5
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Post by Ace on Oct 28, 2007 11:34:37 GMT -5
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Post by Photo on Oct 30, 2007 3:14:10 GMT -5
:DI want Photo many Pierce Brosnan, Wife Cassandra Harris, Son Christopher Harris, and Daughter Charlotte Harris
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Post by xcully on Oct 30, 2007 4:10:06 GMT -5
Thank you Ace, this interview of Pierce with Gloria is really interesting and it's beautiful to hear the Pierce's voice for so many minutes LOL
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Post by Ace on Oct 30, 2007 11:02:07 GMT -5
:DI want Photo many Pierce Brosnan, Wife Cassandra Harris, Son Christopher Harris, and Daughter Charlotte Harris You can go to Ellen's site: www.piercebrosnanonline.com/index.htmlIn the gallery sections are divided for family photos
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Post by tcrown1953 on Apr 26, 2008 16:37:35 GMT -5
Hey I know Pierce is going to be on the Ellen show this Wednesday will anyone have a link of the show after it airs?
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Post by icy1979 on Apr 27, 2008 15:13:08 GMT -5
Hi all, for German television shows there is a website called www.onlinetvrecorder.com/sidebar.php?. There you can record TV shows online and for free and download them after they were broadcasted. I was looking for an equivalent for international TV stations to record ELLEN. However I didn't find anything. Therefore I'd be very happy if one of you could recommend something or if one of you could provide Pierce at ELLEN for download after the broadcast ... Thanks so much! Cheers Steffi
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Post by tcrown1953 on Apr 30, 2008 13:58:53 GMT -5
Hey I was able to catch the interview on Ellen and it was pretty good. A little shorter than I would have liked but what did you guys think about it?
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Post by stace on Apr 30, 2008 14:07:29 GMT -5
ive spent the last hour trying to watch it online, i'm in the uk, ive had no luck, you say it was good, was it all about mamma mia?
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Post by tcrown1953 on Apr 30, 2008 16:14:23 GMT -5
Yea it was all about Mamma Mia and his singing in it. He talked about how it was shot on the same stage that James Bond was shot on and how that was ironic. He probably only talked for three minutes it was very quick
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Post by Ace on Apr 30, 2008 16:51:40 GMT -5
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Post by icy1979 on Apr 30, 2008 17:13:11 GMT -5
Thanks so much, Ace! That's just great!
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Post by Johanna on May 1, 2008 0:54:14 GMT -5
Thanks Ace! He just looks amazing
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