Interview by Monika Agorelius for Australian TV Week, Feb 2001

You now live in Monaco in the South of France. When did you move there?

Five or six years ago. I like the security there. It's very safe. I was robbed many times when I lived before in France.

Do you speak French?

Sufficiently enough to express myself. You may wonder why I have lived in Monaco, France and Switzerland for so long and not learnt to speak the language fluently. The truth is, wherever I have lived everyone speaks English.

How do you spend your time in Monaco? Is it nonstop rest and recreation?

Christina and I have a boat, and the water is a wonderful place to be in the summer. It can be a little fresh in winter, so then we move to Switzerland. We live 1700 meters from one of the most famous ski fields in Switzerland, and we ski out of our front door. We love the cold and the snow, but that's there. I don't like it in Monaco in winter. I expect sunshine when I am there!

Pierce Brosnan has said that people confuse him with James Bond in real life. Living in Monaco and skiing in Switzerland, you must get mistaken for Bond all the time!

As soon as people see me, they know I'm not Bond! They think I'm a great skier when they see me as Bond on film, but they see me rolling around the slopes and realise that I'm not quite as gifted on skis as they thought. Quite often, I get invited into the cockpit of a plane, and the crew thinks I can fly a plane, too. I can barely ride a bicycle.

Do you drive an Aston Martin, too?

No, I did in The Persuaders! It was fine on film but no good if you live in a town. You need somewhere where you can open out the engine of an Aston Martin and let it go.

James Bond has his gadgets. Have you embraced the age of the Internet?

I don't turn on email. I once made the mistake of going into it and was asked "RU007?". I got cluttered, so I gave up.

You don't surf the Net much then?

I love computers but I use them just to write and fax. It's also useful - I have encyclopaedias, maps and stuff on mine. But with the Internet, I'm petrified that if you put your name into something you are going to be bombarded - and I don't really want to use a false name or anything.

It would be very difficult for someone as afamous as you to participate in chat rooms. Fans would go wild.

I've been on chat lines for UNICEF and I also did something talking about cancer with a doctor friend of mine. We spoke as a layman and a doctor, gave our answers over the Net and they used it in the US for medical research.

Do you miss your days as Bond?

Not at all! However, my bank manager misses them very much.

Have you seen the most recent ones?

No, I haven't. I saw the part of the first one that Pierce did, GoldenEye. My son Geoffrey [in fact it must have been Christian] and it looked terrific, but I'm not into fantasy films.

What are some of your favourite films of recent years?

The best drama of the last couple of years was probably Mrs Browní with Dame Judi Dench and Billy Connolly. I loved The Cider House Rules, and I like comedy. The best comedy of the last few years is Jack Nicholson's As Good As It Gets.

Who are some of your favourite actors, ones that you have learnt from?

They're all dead!

Well, what about the younger actors who are around today?

I think there are some very good young actors. I hate them! They're all too good. When I started you didn't have to be good - but today, wow, they've got a lot of competition. That young boy Jude Law, wow, he's good. He's terrific.

Do you find him an exceptionally good-looking actor? Is he better looking than Brad Pitt, for example?

Yes, he can do more with his looks. He can change his looks for different movies. And Johnny Depp - he's another very good and versatile actor. Yeah, there are some very good ones around.

What about the girls?

I like Julia Roberts.

That's interesting - there's a rumour that she likes you as well!

You're lying... you're lying to me! I think she's terrific. She has a quality... you see, film acting is in the eyes. If you say brown and think green, it doesn't work. She has a very good thinking process.

Are you a TV addict?

Yes, I suppose I am. I look at quite a lot of old English TV series. Things like "Fawlty Towers" with John Cleese. They only ever made 12 episodes and I have seen every one a hundred times. "Blackadder", "Absolutely Fabulous", "Only Fools and Horses"... David Jason [who played Derek "Del-Boy" Trotter in "Only Fools And Horses"] is a wonderful actor. Patricia Routledge in "Keeping Up Appearances" is also just so recognisable. All of us know a Madame Bouquet [adopts a shrill voice]... The lady of the house speaking!. A friend of mine wrote the comedy series "'Allo 'Allo!" in the 1980s. It was hilarious, and I even watched "Dynasty" and thought it was so funny. Soap operas are astounding. I got hysterical watching Joan Collins in "Dynasty".

You know Joan Collins, don't you?

Yes, Joan's father and mother were friends of mine. She's a very young woman compared to me, you know.

Do you keep friendly with Tony Curtis from your days in The Persuaders!?

I speak to him occasionally. I see him when Christina and I are in California. For a while, when he was going through a bad problem, we spoke daily. And now he's happily married to a pair of legs. Have you seen his wife Jill? Her legs go forever and she wears little miniskirts. Tony likes them.

What happened to The Persuaders!?

Well, it was extremely popular everywhere except the US. Which is just as well, because if it had been a success there I would probably still be doing it. You know how long they go with series in America! I was very lucky. We worked for a year on that in the early 1970s. At that time in the US the network which had The Persuaders! was the third-ranking network, and they thought they would put it up against their biggest opposition. I don't remember what show it was up against, but if something is not a success in the US, it dies - and The Persuaders! simply wasn't a huge success there.

Would it have been more fun for you to play Tony Curtis' playboy character as opposed to the upper-class character that you played in the series, Lord Brett Sinclair?

That would have been acting, and people never let me act! They just want me to be me because I look like a hero.

In your role with UNICEF, you are a different kind of hero.

I always try to combine my acting work with somewhere where I can get involved with UNICEF activity, so that my fare to get there is paid by the film company and is not an expense for UNICEF. If I appreciate anything about the years I have been working abd successful, it is the fact that it has made me of some use to UNICEF, which is what I really do. That's much more important than jumping around with a gun in your hand. It's the good thing about fame - that you can use your name and image for something useful.



What are the specific UNICEF activities that you do?

I visit countries where I am really useless. I'm not a doctor or a nurse - I'm purely there to witness - but I can be useful on a political level by meeting presidents who are curious to know why James Bond is in their country and looking after the interests of children. And there is the awareness aspect - to let the world know that there are problems. You have to keep reminding the world that 193 countries were signatories of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, and every country in the world from the US has ratified it. Ratifying means that they have to report to an independent body on what they are doing in their country for children, in terms of the convention. The other aspect is with fundraising. I speak at lunches and dinners and drive people mad. I put them to sleep, and while they're asleep I take the money out of their pockets for UNICEF! So a great deal of the year is taken up with that - and a lot of reading. A lot of homework.

Aren't you also involved in a water therapy project aimed at educating Third World countries to clean up their water?

That is one of our most important works - bringing safe drinking water to the world. It's not very easy to do, because you have to convince governments to do it. UNICEF doesn't go around handing out wads of money to governments and saying, "Here, do this". We give governments the equipment and the knowledge to do it. People are very proud. They don't want to be given this kind of thing. They want the knowledge. They don't want to go into a village and turn on a tap. They want to help create the running water they never had. It's a wonderful, tremendous feeling - seeing people have something for the first time that we take for granted.

What are you doing acting-wise?

I'm always looking for something to do with my daughter Deborah. We were supposed to do a project together but it fell through. She was disappointed. The producers got into trouble with their financing. I didn't want to do it in the first place, but they kept convincing me that they would shoot only nine days a year - that's all I had to work. And they kept on offering me a lot of money... I think they offered me so much money that they couldn't afford to make the series! I'm delighted. It wasn't very good. Basically, I will do anything which doesn't take too much time. It's very difficult when you have UNICEF matters to think about, but it's also important that I keep my name alive to be of use. If I go off and do a film in the US for three or six months and it's so bad that nobody goes to see it when it is finally released, well, then I've just wasted six months of my time and my life.

Are you reading scripts and the moment?

Yes, but I find it very difficult to read scripts. I fall asleep! I might do a comedy about death, a black comedy. It's very original and funny. It's in the first-draft stage and I actually could not fall asleep when I was reading it. But it's very bad luck to talk about projects at this early stage. My experience tells me that they don't happen if I do.

You still seem optimistic about it.

Yes, although I get into a terrible state with work. I have an actor's nightmare when I am about to start on a project. It's insecurity. I have this dream. I'm in a play, but the director won't let me in into the dressing-room or show me the script. I have not rehearsed and the curtain is going up, and nobody will show me the script . I'm saying, "Please, help me!". Amazing, isn't it? After all this time, too.

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