007’s close bond with his Irish mammy
FORMER 007 Pierce Brosnan builds his CV around being
‘close to his Irish mammy’ in London, according to the director of a new film about Irishness.
Brosnan, who is a key contributor to Frank
Mannion’s new documentary, Quintessentially Irish, has lived in Malibu, California, since the early 1980s.
But the Navan-raised actor now picks film roles that will allow him to spend as much time as possible with his 91-year-old mother in the UK, where he moved as an 11-year-old.
Mannion said the actor’s mother May ‘lives in the same family house they’ve had for the last 40 years in South London’.
He told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘[Brosnan] said that, while he has quality control with the top Hollywood agent, he always looks to see if there’s a chance to film in the UK.’
Brosnan is currently in Harrogate shooting a biopic of British boxer Prince Naseem Hamed, in which he plays Irish coach Brendan Ingle. After that he’ll set to work on the film adaptation of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, with Helen Mirren and Ben Kingsley.
Mannion added: ‘That’s shooting in London. So he’s actually making two films back-to-back close to his Irish mammy, who he speaks to every single day.’
The 70-year-old actor speaks glowingly of his Irishness in Mannion’s film, which focuses on the ‘82 million people around the world claiming Irish heritage’.
Mannion said: ‘He’s a proud Navan man. He told me he was an altar boy in St Mary’s Church. He remembers making bulrush rafts, seeing the nuns, buttermilk, stuff like that. So he is very nostalgic about Navan in particular, because that’s what formed him.’
Brosnan’s is the ‘quintessential Irish immigration story’. He said: ‘He was the son of a single mother who went off to England to get her nursing qualification, so he was brought up essentially by his aunts and uncles and grandparents and only moved to Putney when he was 11.’
The film also features shorter contributions from actors Andrew Scott, Jessie Buckley, Siobhán McSweeney and Brendan Gleeson.
Mannion met US President
Joe Biden during his visit to Ireland last year and asked him why Irish shoemakers make great presidents – both Biden’s and Barack Obama’s greatgreat-great-grandfathers were shoemakers; both left Ireland from the same port in Co. Louth five weeks apart in the 1840s and disembarked at the same port in New York.
Mr Biden said: ‘Yeah, isn’t that amazing? Who would have thought two sons of
Irish shoemakers would go on to be American presidents? Barack thinks it’s amazing. I’m amazed at it.’