Pierce Brosnan - Personal Life

Personal Life

Brosnan met Australian actress Cassandra Harris through David Harris, one of Richard Harris' nephews, in 1977, shortly after he left drama school. On meeting her, he has described his feelings, saying, "What a beautiful looking woman. I never for an instant thought she was someone I'd spend 17 years of my life with. I didn't think of wooing her, or attempting to woo her; I just wanted to enjoy her beauty and who she was." They began dating, and eventually bought a house in Wimbledon. They married on 27 December 1980 and had one son together, Sean, who was born on 13 September 1983. They lived with her children, Charlotte and Christopher, and after their father Dermot Harris died in 1986, he adopted them and they took the surname Brosnan.

Financially, Brosnan was concerned about earning enough money to get by at this time, and supplemented their income by working in West End productions, and a television film about Irish horse racing. Soon after Harris appeared in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only in 1981, with a bank loan, they moved to southern California where Brosnan had his first interview in Hollywood for Remington Steele, and subsequently no longer had financial worries.

When Remington Steele was sent to Ireland to film an episode there, generating significant publicity in doing so, Brosnan was briefly reunited with his father who visited his hotel. Brosnan had expected to see a very tall man, but describes his father as "a man of medium stature, pushed-back silver hair, flinty eyes and a twizzled jaw. He had a very strong Kerry accent." However, Brosnan expresses regret that they met under such circumstances in a public environment rather than on his own terms which would have given him the opportunity to speak privately with him.

While filming The Deceivers in Rajasthan, India, in 1987, his wife Cassandra Harris became seriously ill. She was later diagnosed with ovarian cancer and she died as a result of the illness in December 1991, aged 43. Brosnan struggled to cope with her cancer and death: "When your partner gets cancer, then life changes. Your timetable and reference for your normal routines and the way you view life, all this changes. Because you're dealing with death. You're dealing with the possibility of death and dying. And it was that way through the chemotherapy, through the first-look operation, the second look, the third look, the fourth look, the fifth look. Cassie was very positive about life. I mean, she had the most amazing energy and outlook on life. It was and is a terrible loss, and I see it reflected, from time to time, in my children." Harris had always wanted Brosnan to play the role of James Bond, and in 1995, some four years after her death, Brosnan achieved this when he appeared in GoldenEye.

In 1994, Brosnan met American journalist Keely Shaye Smith in Mexico. In 2001, at Ballintubber Abbey in County Mayo, Ireland, they married. They have two sons together, Dylan Thomas Brosnan (birth 13 January 1997) and Paris Beckett Brosnan (birth 27 February 2001).

In July 2003, Elizabeth II awarded Brosnan an honorary OBE for his "outstanding contribution to the British film industry". As an Irish citizen, he is ineligible to receive the full OBE honour, which is awarded only to a citizen of the Commonwealth realms. In 2002, Brosnan was also awarded an Honorary degree from the Dublin Institute of Technology and, one year later, the University College Cork.

On 23 September 2004, Brosnan became a citizen of the United States, but retained his Irish citizenship. Brosnan said that "my Irishness is in everything I do. It's the spirit of who I am, as a man, an actor, a father. It's where I come from." Brosnan was asked by a fan if it annoyed him when people get his nationality confused. He said: "It amuses me in some respects that they should confuse me with an Englishman when I'm dyed-in-the-wool, born and bred Irishman...I don't necessarily fly under any flag. But no, it doesn't bother me."

Brosnan and wife Keely Shay Smith were involved in a riparian water rights legal case (1999-2010). The dispute centred on a parcel of land in Wainiha.