One James Bond Actor Was Perfect As 007, And Has Used That Charm to Trick Audiences for Decades Since

Skip to content 007’s charm has taken a very interesting turn over the years. Arguably one of the best actors who stepped into the role of the MI6 agent has evolved with it. The confidence is still there. So is the wit. But the actor carrying it has gotten darker roles. Much darker. The smile is still doing its job, but now there’s usually something unpleasant lurking behind it. A thief. A killer. A man with enough bodies in his past to fill out a very uncomfortable résumé. And somehow, he’s still the most interesting person in the room.

That’s what makes this evolution so much fun to watch. The charm never disappeared. It just started belonging to worse people. The polished gentleman became the criminal. The smooth talker became the mess. And eventually, that familiar confidence found its way into the hands of someone who really shouldn’t be trusted with it. By the time we reach his most recent villainous role, the question isn’t whether the charm is still there. Of course it is. The question is what happens when that charm belongs to the villain.

Pierce Brosnan spent years convincing audiences that charm was enough to make a dangerous man worth rooting for—and for some, longing for. As James Bond, that was practically the entire point. Bond could lie, cheat, drink, kill, and leave a trail of destruction behind him. And he’d still look like the most reasonable guy out of everyone. But Brosnan had a way of making all of it seem impossibly cool. He was suave without seeming distant, dangerous without losing his sense of humor, and confident enough to make even the most outrageous Bond fantasy feel believable.

But underneath that facade, Brosnan never really abandoned that persona after leaving 007. As a matter of fact, it’s either such a natural part of his personality or has become ingrained in his character, that he can’t leave it behind anymore. It’s very similar to someone like Robert Downey Jr. and his connection to the Iron Man persona. Currently, there might not be an official 007. The next film’s producer has made an announcement for fans waiting on James Bond 26.

The transformation had already begun while Brosnan was still playing 007. In 1999, he starred in The Thomas Crown Affair as a wealthy art thief. By most reasonable standards, that makes him the villain. Crown steals priceless paintings. He manipulates people. He treats the world like a game and everyone in it like a piece on the board. And somehow, Brosnan makes him hard to dislike. He is charming. Playful. Impossibly polished. The kind of man who seems to know something you don’t. You know Crown is getting away with something. You just don’t mind watching him do it.

That was the trick Brosnan brought to Bond, too. The gun helped. So did the gadgets and the tuxedo. But his real weapon was charm. He could make an audience trust a man simply by making that man enjoyable to watch. And then there were the women who adored him. Lots of them. After Bond, Brosnan started taking that quality apart. The Tailor of Panama gave him a much more compromised kind of spy and began the descent.

The Matador went further, casting him as Julian Noble, a drunken, unstable hitman who has lost most of Bond’s polish. Julian is crude. He’s loud. He’s often a mess. But Brosnan hasn’t lost the charm. Julian can still talk his way into a room and make people pay attention. He just doesn’t have Bond’s control anymore. The character basically spent years doing horrible things to people. Then, somewhere along the way, normal human connection became a foreign language. When Danny shows him some genuine kindness, Julian is caught off guard. Although he doesn’t want to let it go, he doesn’t know how to keep it. But there’s something lonely underneath all the swagger. Brosnan takes the qualities that made Bond so appealing and gives them to a man who has no idea how to use them anymore.

That evolution finally reaches its most interesting destination with Conrad Harrigan in MobLand. Brosnan plays the patriarch of a powerful crime family, and Conrad isn’t hiding some secret good side. He’s ruthless. He’s willing to get his hands dirty. He’ll do whatever he thinks is necessary to keep his family in power. But Brosnan doesn’t play him like a gangster who needs to spend every scene reminding us he’s dangerous. Conrad can be funny. He can be charming. Then, just as quickly, he can turn cold.

That’s what makes MobLand feel like another step in something Brosnan has been doing for years. James Bond could walk into a room and make everyone believe he was in control. Thomas Crown could walk into one and make everyone forget he was a thief. Julian Noble could walk into one and make everyone forget how badly he was falling apart. Conrad Harrigan doesn’t need anyone to forget anything. He walks in, and people listen. The difference is that this time, Brosnan’s charm belongs to the bad guy. After years of playing Bond, audiences learned to associate that confidence with a hero. Brosnan’s later roles kept the confidence and changed the man underneath it. By the time he gets to Conrad, the charm has become something else entirely. And that might be the most interesting part. Brosnan never lost the ability to make audiences want to follow him. He just started giving them much worse people to follow.

Maybe the tuxedo changed and the Aston Martin DB5 license got handed back, but that dangerous little smile never really went anywhere. If anything, Pierce just started ordering his martinis shaken with the blood of victims.