Pierce Brosnan might be 72, but he’d come out of secret service retirement “in a heartbeat” if new James Bond director Denis Villeneuve wanted him.
In an interview with the Radio Times, Brosnan joked that he could return to the 007 franchise as a “senior citizen” if called upon for the upcoming movie, which Villeneuve is directing and Steve Knight is writing for Amazon MGM Studios.
Brosnan played Bond for seven years between 1995 and 2002 in GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day before hanging up his tuxedo and putting his golden gun into lockup. Asked about whether he might return if asked, he responded cheerfully.
“My wife Keely [Shaye Smith] and I have been listening to the drumbeat of expectation of who’s going to be the next James Bond,” he said. “There are many great candidates out there, and I’m sure they’re going to make it a spectacle of delight. I don’t think anyone wants to see a craggy, 72-year-old Bond, but if Villeneuve had something up his sleeve I would look at it in a heartbeat. Why not? It’s great entertainment. It could be lots of laughs. Bald caps, prosthetics… Who knows?”
Numerous names have been bandied about as the identity of the next Bond, who would replace Daniel Craig, who succeeded Brosnan in 2006’s Casino Royale.
Brosnan was speaking during an interview for The Thursday Murder Club, the Netflix adaptation of Richard Osman’s novels about a group of pensioners who solve crimes in their spare time.
Speaking about ageing, the star said: “The older you get, the freer you get, because mortality is circling the wagons. Within this story, there’s a lovely lyricism. These four people want to keep their minds active and they also deal with the death that will befall all of us… And it’s all wrapped up in a whodunnit.”
Brosnan’s Thursday Murder Club co-star, Helen Mirren, this week said that Bond “has to be a guy,” adding: “James Bond has to be James Bond, otherwise it becomes something else.”
Brosnan had said in the past it would be “exhilarating” for Bond to be played by a woman, but this week backtracked by telling Saga magazine “it has to be a man.”