Get busy living or get busy dying . . .
Brosnan’s stark warning to his drug-addicted son
PIERCE Brosnan has turned his back on his adopted son because he refuses to kick his drug habit. The James Bond star has repeatedly tried to help Christopher, 32, beat his cocaine and heroin addictions only to be disappointed time and again. Now Brosnan has given up on the boy he raised from the age of eight, telling him to ‘ get busy living, or get busy dying’.
‘Christopher is still very lost,’ he told the magazine Playboy. ‘Shockingly so. I know where he is, but he’s having a hard life.
‘ I can only have strong faith and believe he will recover. He has tested everybody in this family but none more so than himself. He knows how to get out. He doesn’t want to.
‘It’s painful because you shut down. You never completely cut them off, but I have cut Christopher off. I had to say, “ Go. Get busy living, or get busy dying”. He has my prayers.’
Brosnan, 52, adopted Christopher and his sister Charlotte after marrying their mother Cassandra Harris, who died of ovarian cancer in 1991.
Charlotte, 33, won her battle with drink and drugs. But Christopher continues to cause his father much heartache.
An aspiring film producer living in Brixton, South London, Christopher was fined £1,000 for drink- driving in 1996 then jailed for three months for the same offence the following year.
In June, he was arrested on suspicion of possessing heroin. Criminal proceedings were later dropped but friends say the incident led Brosnan to offer him ‘ one last chance to get back on track’.
Now, it appears, he has been let down again.
Those close to Brosnan suggest his second wife, actress Keeley Shaye Smith, may be behind the decision to cut off Christopher.
Brosnan – who played 007 in four films before his recent replacement by Daniel Craig – has two children by Miss Shaye Smith – Dylan Thomas, eight, and Paris Beckett, four.
Charlotte, Christopher and Sean, 21, the son Brosnan had with Miss Harris, have all made it clear they do not like her. A friend of Christopher, who saw him recently, said last night: ‘He was pretty high and probably doing other things, although I didn’t see what.
‘ He didn’t mention that his dad had cut him off. The subject of his dad is never raised unless he brings it up.’
h.meller@dailymail.co.uk