Pierce Brosnan has come full circle.
The Irish-born actor, who launched his acting career in America in 1982 as the debonair con man of “Remington Steele,” returns to TV on Saturday. In the decades between, he became an international star thanks to a quartet of films as James Bond, which also made him a fabulously wealthy man. He’s been featured in everything from comedies (“Mrs. Doubtfire”) and remakes (“The Thomas Crown Affair”) to star-driven vanity projects (Barbra Streisand’s “The Mirror Has Two Faces”) and even musicals (“Mamma Mia!”), all the while keeping his wits about him and stardom intact. Talk about resilience.
The Brosnan we’re about to meet in the new AMC series “The Son” has traded debonair for diabolical. He plays Eli McCullough, a Texas cattle and oil baron whose traumatic teenage years, when he was kidnapped by the Comanche, have made him ruthlessly effective in getting what he wants. Based on a 2013 novel by Philipp Meyer, the series is set both in 1860, when Eli is 13 and played by Jacob Lofland, and in 1915, when Brosnan takes over.
“There were ferocious and medieval times for the pioneers who decided to enter into the Comanche plains,” Brosnan tells The Post. “The Comanche were not having it. Eli is born of this violence. He knows that he lives his life by violence. He knows he will be the last man standing and the first to throw a punch.”
The production took Brosnan, 63, far from the seaside comfort of his homes in Kauai, Hawaii (which he calls “Ireland with the heat turned up”), and Malibu, Calif., where he lives with his wife, Keely Shaye Smith, and their 16-year-old son, Paris Beckett Brosnan. The couple married in 2001, nearly 10 years after Brosnan’s first wife, Cassandra Harris, died of ovarian cancer at 41. (In 2013, the same disease killed the couple’s daughter Charlotte, also at 41.)
“The Son” was filmed on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, at a series of ranches (The Triple C, The Star Hill), and further south in Boerne, a town first settled by German immigrants.
“The main challenge was the summer heat,” says Brosnan in a soft voice that carries the lilt of County Meath, which he left in 1964, at age 12, to live in England with his mother, May, a nurse. “The heat advisory was ‘Do not go out.’ By noon, you’re sitting on a hot horse on a hot land. What sustained everyone was the work.”
“The Son” isn’t Brosnan’s first Western. He co-starred with Liam Neeson in the 2006 film “Seraphim Falls,” set at the end of the Civil War. Granted, that was 11 years ago. But even now, says “The Son” showrunner Kevin Murphy, Brosnan was fit enough to ride again.
“He said, ‘I’ve taken the liberty of taking shooting lessons,’” Murphy recalls, adding, “He’s an actor who is very clear on what he wants to do. Pierce was a big fan of the book. One also might say that his presence is enhanced by the fact that he hasn’t been on TV in a long time.”
Brosnan says getting back to TV was one of his goals.
“What’s happening on TV now is invigorating and exciting. The writing is so potent and robust,” says the actor, who saw a film deal that would have taken him to Russia fall apart shortly before he was offered this series.
“I want to work,” he says. “I don’t want to sit on my ass.”
Still, the actor needed the “reassurance” that once he committed to a series for the standard seven years, he could still fit in a movie into his schedule. “I want to be able to ride both horses. All of those emblems came into focus with Philipp Meyer’s book. It came off the page with such vibrancy.”
Meyer has a suitably rugged profile in keeping with his novel, which was nominated for a 2013 Pulitzer Prize. He eats meat only from animals he’s hunted and has an extensive collection of “weaponry,” Brosnan says, and made sure Eli has “cutting-edge weapons.”
Between acting gigs, Brosnan busies himself in his studio, painting. Trained in England as a commercial artist, he took up painting again in 1987, after several dormant years, and is organizing a show of his work that will open at a Paris gallery later this year.
“Just last week my wife and I photographed 153 pieces of work. I shall boil those down to 25 to 30 paintings,” he says. “If not now, when?”
Brosnan has been lucky in his career, from the moment he came to LA and landed ABC’s “Remington Steele,” which ran for five years.
“It was the start of my career in America,” says Brosnan, who trained at the Drama Centre London. “For that I will be eternally grateful.” Still, one wonders why someone reportedly worth $85 million keeps on working.
“I don’t know what else to do,” he says, chuckling. “Acting sustains my imagination. I love the company of actors. It’s a great way to make a living. You get to travel, have a constant education of [your] psychology juxtaposed next to the character on the page, the exhilaration of creating chemistry and creating a moment of time that is real.
“I dreamt about it, I wished it. I desired it. I got it. It doesn’t get any easier by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s a wonderful way to live your life.”