Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson play hunted and hunter in a new western, Seraphim Falls. Michael Dwyer tracks down the Irish dream team and hears about the Irish in Hollywood, invitations to play Bond, and American accents
The handsomely photographed western Seraphim Falls finally brings together two of Ireland's leading actors, who were born within a year of each other: Liam Neeson on June 7th, 1952 in Ballymena, Co Antrim, and Pierce Brosnan on May 16th, 1953 in Navan, Co Meath. Directed by David Von Ancken, the movie is set in the aftermath of the American Civil War and is based around an extended chase involving two men who fought on opposite sides - Brosnan as the prey and Neeson his dogged pursuer. Enemies on screen, the two actors are in the mood for friendly banter when we meet.
NORTH AND SOUTH
Michael Dwyer:The conflict in the film is between a northerner and a southerner, played by a northerner and a southerner from a different country.
Pierce Brosnan:That irony did not escape us.
Michael Dwyer:And you, Liam, live on the east coast of America, whereas Pierce's home is on the west coast.
Liam Neeson:We're just gypsies, tinkers peddling our craft around the world.
Brosnan:It is really like that. The tinkers used to come around to my grandmother's house in Navan, selling pots and sharpening knives. They were very sweet. My grandmother used to always let them camp on her land.
Neeson:Look, there's Viggo Mortensen at the bar. We did a picture together about 17 years ago with Andie MacDowell - Ruby Cairo. Nobody ever saw it.
Brosnan:Oh, were you playing golf off the pyramids?
Neeson:We actually shot it in seven different countries.
Brosnan:That's funny, because Beaumarie St Clair, who's my partner in Irish Dreamtime [Brosnan's film production company] - her father, Lloyd Phillips, produced that film.
Neeson:Go away! He's a lovely guy.
WHEN PIERCE MET LIAM
Neeson:My first memory of running into you, Pierce, was an age ago. We were standing by the bar at the Four Seasons [in Los Angeles]. Obviously, you were already a very successful actor, but nobody was bothering you. I remember introducing myself and we had a couple of beers.
Brosnan:I remember it well.
Neeson:I think we just opened up to each other and shared some thoughts about Hollywood and working as an actor. Then we went our separate ways.
Brosnan:I remember we met again very briefly at some Hollywood bash, and that was it until Seraphim Falls.
MAKING THE FILM
Neeson:I was thrilled to hear they wanted Pierce to play the other guy. It sounded perfect - two Paddys together. You know, thousands of Irish fought on both sides in the American Civil War.
Michael Dwyer:Westerns were a staple of Irish cinemas when you guys were growing up in the 1950s.
Neeson:Didn't we all play cowboys and Indians back then? My idol was Audie Murphy, who was the most decorated soldier in the second World War. He made dozens of westerns, mostly B-movies, and I saw most of them as a boy. I also liked Randolph Scott a lot.
Michael Dwyer:It's a shame there are so few westerns nowadays. This is the first I've seen since Tommy Lee Jones made The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
Neeson:I don't know if you saw that, Pierce, but it's kind of like our film.
WATCHING MOVIES
Brosnan:I put it on one night at home. Being a member of the academy, it's a wonderful luxury to get all those DVDs of the films being put forward, but you get so many that you watch one and then another and another. You have to be very careful they don't all blend into each other.
Neeson:I'm very lazy that way, too. I really should make the effort to go out and see more movies in the cinemas.
Brosnan:But we're always so busy working, hopefully making a living.
Neeson:And you still want to cast your vote in the Oscars. My wife's [actress Natasha Richardson] a voter as well. She gets sent stuff and I get sent the same stuff.
Michael Dwyer:Liam, do you and Natasha compare notes?
Neeson:We do. We take it very seriously.
Michael Dwyer:And Liam, your mother-in-law [Vanessa Redgrave] is a voter, too, and an Oscar winner for Julia. I thought she and Peter O'Toole were radiant in their scenes together in Venus.
Brosnan:It's a shame he has never won an Oscar.
Neeson:He got the special Academy Award, but said he didn't want it because he wanted to actually win one.
A VERY IRISH WESTERN
Michael Dwyer:Returning to Seraphim Falls, with both of you in it and Anjelica Huston doing a cameo and an Irishman, David Flynn, producing it, it must be the most Irish western since the heyday of John Ford.
Neeson:Yeah, that's pretty wild when you think about it.
Brosnan:Anjelica was great when she came on the scene. Liam and I were apart in so many scenes. He would clock in in the morning and I would clock in in the afternoon. We only met whenever we got a chance to have a drink together. Anjelica arrived to do her scenes in Lordsburg, which is a kind of moonscape very close to the border near El Paso.
Neeson:We shared a motel with these very tough border patrol guards. When we were coming in at night, they were leaving to go and check the border.
Brosnan:Anjelica would put a little bar on for us. The girl came in and took care of us.
Neeson:It was great to have a female presence there after all that time.
Brosnan:I'm not great at socialising. I just get on with doing the job. But Anjelica put a full bar outside her room in this anonymous little motel. She was terrific. We were sorry to see her go.
SCREEN PRESENCE SECRETS
Michael Dwyer:It must have been a physically demanding film with all that horse riding and the action scenes. And there's so little dialogue that it relies heavily on your screen presence.
Neeson:That's what attracted me to it. I don't know about you, Pierce.
Brosnan:I loved that aspect, working out to convey this guy's whole life cycle.
Neeson:You have to trust your director, and to be able to say to yourself, "This is enough. I don't have to act this. Just trust the fact that the camera is coming in on you and if you're out of breath, be out of breath. Don't try and seem heroic." And when there is not much dialogue, you don't have to worry about accents.
Brosnan:That's it. Just leave yourself alone. It was tricky.
Neeson:Pierce had it much harder physically than I did. I always had my bearskin on to keep me warm at 14,000 feet, but Pierce had to go underwater and roll down through the snow. I got off lightly.
Brosnan:David Von Ancken, the director, said he didn't want the audience to breathe for the first 12 minutes of the film.
Michael Dwyer:And it is his first film as a director.
Brosnan:Yes, and before that I did The Matador, which was Richard Shepard's first film.
GOODBYE, MR BOND
Michael Dwyer:That was a hoot. The way you played that louche assassin turned your James Bond image on its head.
Brosnan:It was a lovely little jewel that came my way. It just fell into my lap. I wasn't trying to dismantle the Bond image, although a lot of people thought that's what I intended.
Michael Dwyer:Von Ancken says that The Matador opens a new door for you, but Seraphim Falls pulls the door off the hinges.
Brosnan:Oh, you never know. You just keep showing up as an actor.
Neeson:I loved that scene in The Matador where you're walking along in your cowboy boots and black Speedos with your gut hanging out. Now that's an actor! You did more than give the finger to the Bond people. That was great.
Michael Dwyer:Were you ever in the running to play Bond, Liam?
Neeson:I was courted for it, along with a bunch of other actors. That was after I did Schindler's List. But this guy had to do it. He is Bond.
Brosnan:Well, it was good while it lasted. I wish Daniel Craig well with it.
Neeson:He's a good actor. He wasn't used in Munich at all, I thought. He was like a glorified extra.
Michael Dwyer:Pierce, was it all hardball in the end between you and the Bond producers?
Brosnan:Not at all. They just said, "That's it". I got a phone call one day from my agents to say negotiations were cut off.
TURNING PRODUCER
Neeson:How cool it was of you, Pierce, to have your own production company up and running with four or five other films set up then.
Brosnan:Ah, the luck of the Irish!
Neeson:Connery never got that together.
Brosnan:But that was a different time.
Neeson:You were very clever, quite brilliant, to set yourself up as a producer and an actor with films like The Thomas Crown Affair.
Brosnan:If my first Bond picture, GoldenEye, went down in flames, I had to have something else set up. My way of doing that was to produce my own pictures through Irish Dreamtime.
Michael Dwyer:Maybe sometime your company will set up a picture for yourself and Liam - and Gabriel Byrne, whom we met in the lift this afternoon.
Neeson:Now that really would be Irish dreamtime.
Seraphim Falls opens today.
What's next for Neeson and Brosnan?
Liam Neeson follows Seraphim Fallswith the thriller , as an ex-spy who has to rely on the skills of his former profession to save his daughter (Maggie Grace), who has been forced into the slave trade. Produced and co-scripted by Luc Besson, Takenis directed by Pierre Morel, who made the exhilarating French thriller, District 13.
Neeson follows that with Richard Eyre's The Other Man, playing a man who discovers that his late wife (Juliette Binoche) had an adulterous affair while they were married. He also reprises the role of Aslan the lion in the voice cast of the second Chronicles of Narnia movie, Prince Caspian, which opens next May. And Neeson remains committed to portraying Abraham Lincoln in a biopic Steven Spielberg plans to shoot after he finishes his fourth Indiana Jones adventure.
Pierce Brosnan has two films in the can: the kidnapping thriller Butterfly on a Wheel, with Maria Bello and Gerard Butler, and a 1940s-set drama, Married Life, with Patricia Clarkson and Chris Cooper. Brosnan is now co-starring with Meryl Streep in the movie of Mamma Mia!, the stage show based on Abba songs, in which they duet on SOS. After that, he reprises his role as the eponymous wealthy crook of The Thomas Crown Affair(1999) in The Topkapi Affair.
