Pierce Brosnan has always excelled at playing characters we have to like, despite ourselves. Even the role that brought him to prominence, Remington Steele, the faux private eye from the television series of the same name, was a bit of a rogue. After years of smooth charm and playful sexual tension with co-star Stephanie Zimbalist, it's easy to forget that Steele wasn't who he claimed to be: He was a character with a shady past who had lied his way into a job at a struggling detective agency. As Brosnan navigated the tricky transition from TV to film, some of his most popular roles would be patterned after this mold: his art thief in The Thomas Crown Affair, his banished spy in The Tailor of Panama, his master jewel thief in After the Sunset—characters who exist outside the law yet are also the people audiences find themselves rooting for. It's probably why Brosnan made such an excellent James Bond; he brought a sense of danger and outlaw to what had begun to turn into a two-dimensional cliché.
With his good looks and natural charisma, it isn't hard to see why moviegoers would get behind any role he plays—which is part of what makes his performance in The Matador, opening Dec. 29, such a revelation. As Julian Temple, an aging assassin who develops a strange connection with a visiting salesman (played by Greg Kinnear) while both are on assignment in Mexico City, Brosnan is earning some of the best reviews of his career. A hit man without the fancy gadgets or government backing of 007, Julian is nevertheless a distant cousin of that famous character. Bitter, burned-out, and constantly barraging others with crude insults, Julian is a mess. It's reflected in his physical appearance, as well: Unkempt and sagging, Brosnan sports a sleazy mustache and lets his gray hair down. He's traded in his tuxedo for an array of startlingly unhip clothing, topped off by a pair of goofy cowboy boots that practically steal scenes on their own. It's a bold, funny performance that recently earned the actor his second Golden Globe nomination—his first in 21 years.
Brosnan had no hesitation about taking on the role; he was so drawn to writer-director Richard Shephard's script that Brosnan's company, Irish DreamTime, helped produce the flick. And he embraced Julian's seamy side. "I was very cognizant that I had created an image for myself on a grand scale with playing James Bond," says Brosnan from the New Mexico set of his upcoming Western, Seraphim Falls. "I suppose there might have been a desire deep down to shake up that image." Still, he worried about whether he could pull it off, specifically the coarse language Julian is prone to use. "I had a weekend where I had a crisis of confidence," Brosnan confesses. "I thought, 'The audience is not going to follow me; it'll look like I'm trying too hard, or I'll distance them with this lewdness.'" In the end he put his faith in the script. "I was aware I was presenting myself in this way, but it was so well-written and well-founded that I thought we could get away with it," he says. "Honestly, the script just made me laugh. I think if I had played it real on-the-nose, angry, it wouldn't have been the same film. There's a heightened theatricality here. Another actor might have played it in a different vein, and you'd have a really dark piece. But I thought [the script] was outrageously funny."
The Matador is a dark comedy full of "one-liners to relish" and hilarious interplay between Brosnan and Kinnear, but, at the end of the day, Julian is still a fairly despicable character, as he warns his friend, "Just because we share a laugh doesn't mean I'm not unsavory." Key to playing the role, says Brosnan, was deciding not to pass judgment. "It wasn't up to me to judge him; I loved him," he says. "I can't begin to imagine the reality of his life. He knows something is going to come crushing down around his ears. I saw him as someone with arrested development. And he made me howl with laughter. He has a wonderful sense of irony and depravity; Julian is the ultimate vulgarian, yet there's a sense of humanity there."
Brosnan cites the sweet family man played by Kinnear as an excellent balance for Julian. "I had a safety net in the great Greg Kinnear," says Brosnan. "If he wasn't so funny and vulnerable and generous and open as an actor, all my ways would have been for naught. We bought into each other's worlds, and it worked."
Brosnan also enjoyed toying with his own image, which included finding a unique and unflattering look for the role. "I've gotten so used to playing the same chords and the same notes and doing the same shtick, I thought, if I don't pull something out of the hat now, I might never start doing it," he admits. He hit upon the idea for Julian's footwear when costume designer Cat Thomas called him up and asked if he had any ideas. "I said, 'Cowboy boots,'" Brosnan recalls. "That's as good as it gets. And she bought me those sick, twisted, goofy, commedia dell'arte cowboy boots. So you could say Julian was built from the ground up. Then Cat came up with the tight shirts and orange jacket." As for the crowning glory—that awful mustache—Brosnan thought it said so much about the character. "I kind of had the mustache in my head from the start," he says. "It sort of furthers this idea [that] his sexuality is kind of ambivalent. Richard calls him a trisexual: He'll try anything. With the mustache and the gold chain and the tattoos…I just thought this was it."
The risk seems to have paid off, with the film and Brosnan earning acclaim. The Matador was also nominated for best picture (musical or comedy) at this year's Globes, and Brosnan couldn't be more proud. He'll be back in Los Angeles for the January ceremonies "with bells on," he says. "I got one of these nominations over 20 years ago, and I thought, 'Well, I'm off to the races; this is great.' It's taken me all this time to come back around."
Several other actors are garnering attention for portraying questionable characters, as well. Critic Rex Reed once noted that Jennifer Jason Leigh had a talent for portraying "nuts and sluts." In her current role, she gets to be a little of both as Beverly, the party hostess from hell in The New Group's production of Mike Leigh's play Abigail's Party, onstage at New York's Acorn Theatre through Feb. 11, 2006. It would be easy to pigeonhole Beverly as evil: She demeans her guests with remarks that are insensitive at best, belittles her real estate agent husband (played by Max Baker), and is generally immune to everyone's discomfort. She even attempts to seduce one partygoer with an exotic dance—in full view of everyone.
Leigh has played sympathetic villains before; her portrayal of Bridget Fonda's lonely, obsessed roommate in the film Single White Female still resonates 13 years after its release. In films such as Georgia and onstage as Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Leigh has managed to make neediness and self-indulgence easier to swallow with her uninhibited performances. Tell her that you felt bad for her murdering psychopath in Single White Female, and she takes it as a compliment. "It means that I did something well," she notes. "When you play somebody, you only want to play them from their point of view. You want to inhabit them and not wink at the audience, not tell the audience, 'I'm not really like this.' Ultimately you try to get them to connect with you in some way, even if you are playing someone heinous. You want them to recognize what in them is like that character that is so repellent."
Leigh has never shied away from strong women's roles, good or bad, and says she doesn't have a preference between hero or villain. "I just want to play something that has more than one level going on, that isn't one-note and is interesting to me as an actor," she says. "I'm just drawn to great characters, and, in this case, Mike Leigh is one of the greatest writers around, and the play is perfection. It's one of the greatest parts in my life, and I'm loving doing it."
While some may view Beverly as villainous, Leigh has a great fondness and sympathy for her character. "Everything she does comes from a good place; she just always ends up making people feel worse," she reasons. "[Actor-playwright] Wally Shawn said to me, 'We all need a little more Bev in us.' And I like that. I love her need to enjoy life and even her hedonism and materialism. She just never wants the party to end. There's something unbounded about her that I identified to my childhood in a way. I was always bossy and inventing games, and I loved that feeling of not being scared of anything. Beverly has that freedom; this is a woman who has such a hunger for people and friendship and connection."
Leigh also justifies some of Beverly's behavior by pointing out that she is a misunderstood, insecure woman trapped in a sexless marriage. "If her husband walked in at the start and said, 'Oh, my God, you look so sexy tonight,' the evening would turn out very different," Leigh notes. Still, she admits that many people will view Beverly as the villain of the piece. "Some people don't like her," she says with a sigh. "A friend of mine came and said, 'She's such a witch,' and I was, like, 'Easy,' because I love her."
Not far from where Leigh is tearing up the stage as Beverly, another villain is packing in audiences. In John Doyle's abstract, imaginative new staging of the Stephen Sondheim classic Sweeney Todd at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, actor Michael Cerveris is portraying the murderous barber with delicious abandon. One of the great stage roles of the 20th century, Sweeney is the classic antihero. Stripped of his family and sent away for a crime he didn't commit, he returns home to exact revenge on those who wronged him. Until he can reach them, however, he takes up slitting the throats of anyone who ends up in his chair and turning over the bodies to the local pie maker. It's wonderfully repellent, unclean fun, and the audience has a grand time rooting for Sweeney to get away with it all.
Sweeney Todd has a special place in Cerveris' heart: It was the first Broadway show he ever saw, and he calls Broadway's original Sweeney, Len Cariou, a personal hero. Still, he wasn't actively looking to take on the role. "It's a little overwhelming," he admits. "But it came my way, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity, especially in this production, which focuses on the humanity and the reality of his situation in a way that I think helps us sort of identify in frightening ways with the character."
Cerveris has tackled complex villains before; he won a Tony last year for his portrayal of John Wilkes Booth in Assassins, another Sondheim revival. And he sees similarities in the two roles. "Nobody thinks of themselves as a villain," he says. "People who do horrific things have some sort of justification or rationalization for it. Everyone knows the feeling of being unfairly treated, and everybody knows the human desire for revenge. They're characteristics common to everyone; these two particular characters just happen to take it to extremes."
In Sweeney Todd, Cerveris is in the odd position of being the killer the audience is rooting for. While his searing portrait deserves credit, Cerveris praises the script for making Sweeney such a compelling character. "It's the writing that makes these kinds of roles work," he observes. "When writers are able to do that, they really have something. These kinds of characters stand outside the law and the rules of society, and I think there's a part of us that immediately roots for the outsider. It almost doesn't matter that the thing they're outside is goodness." Cerveris also believes it can be cathartic for an audience to side with the bad guy. "Just the fact that they're fighting against the odds sort of enlists our sympathies," he notes. "In a weird way, we want to see them get away with it in a way we wouldn't if it were real life."
Of course when audiences start rooting for murderers, things can get complicated, which is why Cerveris is careful about the projects he chooses. "Once I've read the script and feel confident that the script and the production are not glorifying the violent action or antisocial behavior of a character and the thrust of the story says something I can agree with, then I'm free to portray the humanity of the character as truthfully and faithfully as possible," he says. "And if people are then drawn in and made to feel sympathetic and look at their own feelings of sympathy and revulsion, I think that's a valuable thing. If it was something where I was afraid the author's intentions were skewed or the production was cheapening the message, then I would be more concerned about it. But in the last two productions, that hasn't been a concern."
Also not a concern for the actor: being typecast. For one who plays the villain so well, it's easy to keep being cast as the heavy. But Cerveris remains philosophical. "If I have to be typecast as something, I think it's more interesting than being typecast as the bland, affable nice guy," he says. "I think most actors would probably say that. I think actors are drawn to extremes, and extreme goodness is seldom represented in art and a little harder to embody."
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, too, has been bad before, most notably in Ang Lee's Western Ride With the Devil and Julie Taymor's Titus. And, like Brosnan, Rhys-Meyers is able to pull off criminal behavior with a certain smoothness thanks to his genes. The Irish actor has always been an interesting presence in films, even when playing the good guy, such as the hunky soccer coach in Bend It Like Beckham. But as Chris Wilton, a tennis pro who is drawn into a world of wealth and privilege in modern London in the new Woody Allen film Match Point, Rhys-Meyers serves up the best performance of his career.
Chris is affable and polite, but there's a certain suspicious element behind his icy blue eyes as he courts the sweet sister (Emily Mortimer) of one of his clients, a wealthy businessman named Tom (played by Matthew Goode). As he becomes more involved with the sister, he also finds himself drawn to Nola, Tom's American fiancée (Scarlett Johansson). Despite the sense of impending disaster, Chris embarks on an affair that takes the character to dark—and unexpected—places. It's a fascinating study of how far someone might go to attain and maintain a comfortable lifestyle, and Rhys-Meyers carries the film with a smooth confidence.
Oddly enough, Allen had the actor in mind for Chris based on his performance as the sweet coach in Beckham. "It's strange when there's a director out there and you're going to do his film and you don't know it," Rhys-Meyers notes. Although the roles are quite different, the actor doesn't view Chris as an out-and-out villain. "He doesn't lend much to your average villain," he notes. "I think he's a good guy in a bad situation, and I think that's what made him attractive to me. If he was just a bad guy, a sort of [Talented Mr.] Ripley character, there's no appeal. It's so methodical, then, there's really no sense of desperation about him."
It's that desperation that Rhys-Meyers believes helps the audience get behind Chris. Rather than being a smooth, practiced bad guy, the character makes frequent mistakes and is even bumbling in his lies. "We wanted to make him, if not humorous, clumsy," the actor reveals. "He wasn't very proficient at his terrible acts. If he hadn't been so clumsy, the audience wouldn't have retained any sympathy for him. That was very important to Woody, that audiences are with Chris." Match Point focuses on the concept of luck in the ability to get away with bad behavior. "Woody felt that, in life, small things like cheating on your wife or on your taxes—most people get away with it," says Rhys-Meyers. "And bigger crimes—like government crimes—who really pays for those things? I think that's what Woody really wanted to talk about, the reality of people doing bad things without justice."
Like Brosnan, Leigh, and Cerveris, Rhys-Meyers was careful not to judge Chris' actions. "When I embark on a piece of work, I tend to forget my own moralistic values," he says. "They can't exist for me. Only the values of the character I'm playing exist for me. Is it terrible what Chris does? Yes, it is, but I have to go along with it and see it from his point of view." One danger in this is the actor's tendency to take his work home with him. "I remember when I was in Ride With the Devil, my family couldn't be around me," he recalls. "My whole energy changed, my physicality changed. I dropped down to 120 pounds for it and had a very cold psyche at the time. I was quite vicious and almost inhuman." He says this is a result of working instinctually. "I don't tend to take things externally and bring them in; I tend to look for similarities between myself and the role," he notes. "I think we all take our characters home with us."
Rhys-Meyers will next be seen in Mission: Impossible III; he won't say if he's playing good or bad and doesn't profess a preference for either. "They both have their qualities," he says. "Even if I'm playing the best part in the world, I'll have love days and hate days. There's no one film that I love making completely, and there no one film that I hate making completely." And he doesn't concern himself with typecasting or audience response. "What other people think of me and what other people think of Chris Wilton are truly none of my business," he says simply. "Everybody's going to get an individual perception; no one person's going to see it the same way. That's the joy of cinema: Once the lights go down, it's you and the piece. And that's exciting."
