Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic “It’s a whole other passion in life that has been slowly percolating – and it’s the last thing anyone expects from a James Bond.” Actor, producer (and fifth Bond) Pierce Brosnan is discussing his other, lesser-known life as an artist. Born in County Louth, Ireland, in 1953, Brosnan moved to England aged 11 and began his working life as a commercial artist at the Ravenna Studios, an advertising studio in Putney. He started at 16 “with nothing but a folder full of drawings and paintings”, he recalls. “All I knew is that I wanted an artist’s life.” It was only when a colleague suggested that Brosnan attend a workshop at the Ovalhouse Theatre, where “he became hooked”, that he pursued a career in acting. “I joined a company and the passion was ferocious: the want, the desire, the work.” Nevertheless, the calling to be an artist still remained. “To choose one over the other would be like taking away my right or left lung,” says Brosnan, who has always drawn and painted. “That desire still burns. You go out there to do your best and you give yourself. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t. It’s all a coup. Big movies, little movies, big canvases, miniatures. It’s a creative life, it’s dreaming.”In the next chapter of his creative life, he is joined by Berlin-based designer Stefanie Hering (58), the founder of brand Hering Berlin, which has been producing tableware, glassware and collectable objects with a team of master craftspeople for more than 30 years. The pair have collaborated on a series of limited-edition vessels, So Many Dreams (25 sets of three pieces, priced £11,500 and available from 8 March), that transpose Brosnan’s line drawings Solitude, Tryst and Mirage onto her Tropo vases. The pieces form a triptych sculpture with a visual narrative that changes as the vessels are rotated. Neither will make money from the project: the profits are being donated to the King’s Trust. The actor, who has been an ambassador for Unicef Ireland since 2001, has already raised money for charity through his artworks.At 71, Brosnan remains remarkably unchanged – the chiselled features and piercing grey-blue eyes that made him Ian Fleming’s 007 in the ’90s have softened only slightly. He hung up his Walther PPK pistol in 2002 aged 49, having appeared in four Bond films – GoldenEye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World is Not Enough (1999) and Die Another Day (2002) – but he has continued to work; to date he’s appeared in more than 140 films. He is currently working on the much-anticipated Giant, a boxing biopic about the rise of Naseem Hamed, which is produced by Sylvester Stallone’s production company; and The Fixer, a new TV series with Tom Hardy and Helen Mirren, directed by Guy Ritchie, which will air on Paramount+ later this year.There is a lightness, a spontaneity, to his work“Who doesn’t love Guy Ritchie? He sent me the first five episodes. Gangsters. Brilliant. Good old shenanigans,” says Brosnan. “So I jumped in and I was working with Helen: we were doing a film last year, The Thursday Murder Club, which is a beloved book by Mr Richard Osman – Chris Columbus was directing. I did Mrs Doubtfire with him, and Percy Jackson,” he reflects. “It’s wonderful. It’s very enriching and gratifying.”Brosnan’s output as an artist is no less impressive. He sketches and paints in a studio in the garage of his LA home (which he shares with son Paris, 23, also an artist), and first drew the attention of the art world in 2018 when his painting of Bob Dylan sold for €1.4mn at the 25th amfAR Cinema Against Aids Gala in Cannes. In 2023, he showcased some 50 paintings and 100 drawings in his first solo art exhibition in Los Angeles, and he made his Art Basel Miami debut. His output is joyously colourful (“that’s because I’m self-taught and don’t know how to mix colour”, he jokes), with an expressive style exploring the themes of love, loss and renewal. Brosnan’s wife, Keely Shaye Brosnan, his “biggest supporter”, encouraged his leap into the art world. “Keely pushes me to do things. I’ve been a very lucky man to marry such a fine woman,” he says. It was Keely who introduced him to Hering’s work and found a way for them to meet. “I thought. ‘Oh my God, this is crazy,” says Hering, who wears an all black outfit and sports a platinum crop. “I was meeting this legend in person. Then I saw his work. There is a lightness, a spontaneity there,” she says. “Stefanie’s work is so cool and elegant – it’s light as a feather, brilliant,” Brosnan replies. “She was interested in a collaboration and I was over the moon!” Once back home, he sent her his drawings. “There were so many it was difficult to choose just three,” says Hering. Brosnan is delighted with the results of the project: “It’s lovely, they now have their own life force.”Hering is known for porcelain but often explores other materials. The first piece she recalls making aged 16 was a tea set at her parents’ home in Warmbronn, near Stuttgart. “I wanted to use my hands and pay homage to something used everyday,” she says. She cites artist Lucie Rie as an influence, “but also architecture and Buckminster Fuller because of his structural experiments inspired by nature.” She often works on collaborations and her “art for the table” adorns the restaurants of some of the world’s best chefs. “Art, design and craft, what you do depends on the moment,” she says of her practice. “But art, of course, you make for yourself.”Brosnan’s influences include Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and surrealism. “When I started as an artist in the 1960s, I was somewhat behind the eight ball, but I had intuition and instinct,” he says. “I remember going to Smiths with my little pay packet and the first book I bought was Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea – existentialism! I had no bloody idea about existentialism whatsoever, but I liked the cover of the book, which was by Salvador Dalí. I had discovered his work.” He leans forward confessionally. “That just lit me up inside. I began to draw constantly, and that’s continued.” He often illustrates his film scripts. “I underline my scripts – it somehow helps me take ownership of the words,” he says. Those scripts are also “loaded with drawings”. Some take on a life of their own. “I have four characters on the page that I’m going to turn into a children’s book at some point,” he says. Of his film oeuvre, The Thomas Crown Affair resonates most. “The plot goes hand-in-hand with being an artist,” he says. “And I wanted to stand up to Steve McQueen [who was in the 1968 original]. He was a hero of mine.” Mostly, however, his art is a companion in what can be a solitary existence on the road. “I have my pastels and my crayons and pencils, and my carving tools that I got in Geneva,” he says. “You have something to alleviate the stress and the strain. It’s always a challenge, the constant doing and showing up.”There have been times when he hasn’t been able to use this creative outlet. “We went to America around 1982, but left my art kit in a cupboard. I didn’t have time, I was working so hard on the series Remington Steele,” he says. “And then my first wife [Cassandra Harris] got sick; we found out she had cancer [she died of the illness in 1991]. And one dark night I just got out of bed with a belly full of fear. I loved Anselm Kiefer, so I just pulled out a canvas at four o’clock in the morning and started painting with my fingers.” Brosnan still has those pieces: one is entitled One Dark Night. “It’s physical, it’s anxiety and tension. It’s when you need to do something, anything.”Does Hering find art therapeutic? “No,” she laughs. “Exciting, rewarding but definitely not therapeutic.” Collaborating with others, however, offers a different dimension. “It’s communicating together to produce something new – you reach another border/frontier and have to cross another line.” As for Brosnan’s former life as a secret agent, he’s happy to see others in the role; he thinks Aaron Taylor-Johnson should be in the running to play the next 007. “He was in one of the movies I made called The Greatest with Carey Mulligan and Susan Sarandon. He showed up and, well, he just filled the space.” Brosnan claims he never tires of being asked about Bond. “I mean, once you walk down that road you are going to live with it for a long time. It’s a gift that keeps giving. It’s allowed me to do what I do – now as an artist and a painter.” Stefanie Hering, heringberlin.comThanks to Nightingale at 1 Hotel Mayfair
