​Pierce Brendan Brosnan OBE (born 16 May 1953) is an Irish actor and film producer. He is best known as the fifth actor to play secret agent James Bond in the Bond film series, starring in four films from 1995 to 2002 (GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, and Die Another Day) and in multiple video games.

After leaving school at age 16, Brosnan began training in commercial illustration and went on to attend the Drama Centre in London for three years. Following a stage acting career, he rose to popularity in the television series Remington Steele (1982–1987). After the conclusion of the series, Brosnan appeared in films such as the Cold War spy film The Fourth Protocol (1987) and the comedy Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). After achieving worldwide fame for his role as James Bond, Brosnan took the lead in other major films including the epic disaster adventure film Dante's Peak (1997), the remake of the heist film The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), and the musical comedy Mamma Mia! (2008), and its sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).

Brosnan has received two Golden Globe Award nominations, first for the miniseries Nancy Astor (1982) and next for the dark comedy film The Matador (2005). In 1996, along with American film producer Beau St. Clair, he formed a Los Angeles-based production company called Irish DreamTime. He is also known for his charitable work and environmental activism. In 1997, Brosnan received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry. In 2020, he was listed at No. 15 on The Irish Times' list of greatest Irish film actors.

Pierce Brosnan was born on 16 May 1953 at St. Mary's Hospital in Drogheda, County Louth, the only child of May (née Smith) and carpenter Thomas Brosnan.

For 12 years, he lived in Navan, County Meath, and said in 1999 that he considers it to be his hometown. His father abandoned the family when Brosnan was an infant. When he was four years old, his mother moved to London to work as a nurse. From that point on, he was largely brought up by his maternal grandparents, Philip and Kathleen Smith. After their deaths, he lived with an aunt and then an uncle, but was subsequently sent to live in a boarding house run by a woman named Eileen. He later said, "Childhood was fairly solitary. I never knew my father. He left when I was an infant. [...] My mother was very courageous. She took the bold steps to go away and be a nurse in England. Basically wanting a better life for her and myself. My mother came home once a year, twice a year."

Brosnan was brought up in a Catholic family, and left Ireland on 12 August 1964 and went to Scotland to be reunited with his mother and her new husband, William Carmichael, at their home in Longniddry. when he was 11 years old, his step father Carmichael took Brosnan to see a James Bond film for the first time: Goldfinger. They later moved back to London. When discussing his transition from Ireland to England, he said, "When you go to a very large city, a metropolis like London, as an Irish boy of 10, life suddenly moves pretty fast. [...] And you're Irish. And they make you feel it." His nickname at school was simply "Irish".

After leaving school at 16, Brosnan decided to be a painter and began training in commercial illustration at Saint Martin's School of Art in London. While attending a rehearsal for a workshop at the Oval House, he saw a fire eater teaching people how to eat fire and decided to join in. He later trained for three years as an actor at the Drama Centre London. Describing the feeling of becoming an actor and the influence it had on his life, he said, "When I found acting, or when acting found me, it was a liberation. It was a stepping stone into another life, away from a life that I had, and acting was something I was good at, something which was appreciated. That was a great satisfaction in my life."

​Graduating from the Drama Centre in 1975, Brosnan began working as an acting assistant stage manager at the York Theatre Royal, making his acting debut in Wait Until Dark. Within six months, he was selected by playwright Tennessee Williams to play the role of McCabe in the British première of The Red Devil Battery Sign (billed as "Pierce Brosman"). His performance caused a stir in London and Brosnan still has the telegram sent by Williams, stating only "Thank God for you, my dear boy"

Brosnan continued his career making brief appearances in films as well as early television performances. He became a television star in the United States with his leading role in the popular miniseries Manions of America. He followed this in 1982 with the BBC's nine-part miniseries Nancy Astor (which aired in America on Masterpiece Theatre) that dramatised the life of Lady Astor, the first woman to sit in the British Parliament. His portrayal of Robert Gould Shaw II garnered him a 1985 Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

The couple married in December 1980 and had one son together, Sean, who was born on 13 September 1983 and later became an actor. They also lived with Harris' children, Charlotte (1971–2013) and Chris, and Brosnan adopted them after their father Dermot Harris died in 1986; they subsequently took on his surname. ​

​Shortly after the release of Die Another Day, the media began questioning whether or not Brosnan would reprise the role for a fifth time. At that time, Brosnan was approaching his 50th birthday.

In October 2004, Brosnan said he considered himself dismissed from the role. In February 2005 he posted on his website that he was finished with the role.

On 14 October 2005, Daniel Craig took over the role.

​In 2009, Brosnan finished the well-received The Ghost Writer, playing a disgraced British Prime Minister, directed and produced by Roman Polanski. The film won a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.

​Brosnan has been an Ambassador for UNICEF Ireland since 2001 and recorded a special announcement to mark the launch of UNICEF's "Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS" Campaign with Liam Neeson. He also would give to a trust to benefit "environmental, children's and women's health charities." through the sales of his artworks.

​In 2002, Pierce Brosnan was awarded an honorary degree from the Dublin Institute of Technology and, a year later, the University College Cork.

In 2003, Brosnan was rewarded the Irish Film and Television Academy Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to Irish Film.

In July 2003, Queen Elizabeth II made Brosnan an honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his "outstanding contribution to the British film industry". As an Irish citizen, he is ineligible to receive the full OBE honour, which is awarded only to a citizen of the Commonwealth realms, but he is still allowed the letters "OBE" after his name.

On 23 September 2004, he became an American citizen while retaining his Irish citizenship. He said, "My Irishness is in everything I do. It's the spirit of who I am, as a man, an actor, a father. It's where I come from."

​In May 2007, Brosnan and his wife Smith donated $100,000 to help replace a playground on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where they own a house.

In February 2013, Brosnan was awarded honorary patronage of the Dublin University Players society at Trinity College, Dublin.

On 11 February 2015, Brosnan's $18 million Malibu home caught fire and sustained $1 million in damages. During the 30 minutes it took firefighters to extinguish the fire, flames destroyed the contents of the garage, including Brosnan's 2002 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish, and spread to a bedroom above it; no injuries were sustained.

​Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was an English poet, illustrator, painter, and translator, and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.

Rossetti's art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats and William Blake. His later poetry was characterised by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence, The House of Life. Poetry and image are closely entwined in Rossetti's work. He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures, spanning from The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and Astarte Syriaca (1877), while also creating art to illustrate poems such as Goblin Market by the celebrated poet Christina Rossetti, his sister.

Rossetti's personal life was closely linked to his work, especially his relationships with his models and muses Elizabeth Siddal (whom he married), Fanny Cornforth and Jane Morris.

​Following the exhibition of William Holman Hunt's painting The Eve of St. Agnes, which illustrated a poem by John Keats, Rossetti sought out Hunt's friendship. Rossetti's own poem, "The Blessed Damozel", was an imitation of Keats, and he believed Hunt might share his artistic and literary ideals. Together they developed the philosophy of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which they founded along with John Everett Millais.

From the beginning of the Brotherhood's formation in 1848, the group's intention was to reform English art by rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo and the formal training regime introduced by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Their approach was to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art, and their pieces of art included subjects of noble or religious disposition. 

The eminent critic John Ruskin wrote:

Every Pre-Raphaelite landscape background is painted to the last touch, in the open air, from the thing itself. Every Pre-Raphaelite figure, however studied in expression, is a true portrait of some living person.

For the first issue of the brotherhood's magazine, The Germ, published early in 1850, Rossetti contributed a poem, "The Blessed Damozel", and a story about a fictional early Italian artist inspired by a vision of a woman who bids him combine the human and the divine in his art. Rossetti was always more interested in the medieval than in the modern side of the movement, working on translations of Dante and other medieval Italian poets, and adopting the stylistic characteristics of the early Italians.

For many years, Rossetti worked on English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova (published as The Early Italian Poets in 1861). These and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur inspired his art of the 1850s. He created a method of painting in watercolours, using thick pigments mixed with gum to give rich effects similar to medieval illuminations. He also developed a novel drawing technique in pen-and-ink. His first published illustration was "The Maids of Elfen-Mere" (1855), for a poem by his friend William Allingham,

His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Neither Burne-Jones nor Morris knew Rossetti, but were much influenced by his works, and met him by recruiting him as a contributor to their Oxford and Cambridge Magazine which Morris founded in 1856 to promote his ideas about art and poetry.

That summer Morris and Rossetti visited Oxford and finding the Oxford Union debating-hall under construction, pursued a commission to paint the upper walls with scenes from Le Morte d'Arthur and to decorate the roof between the open timbers. Rossetti recruited two sisters, Bessie and Jane Burden, as models for the Oxford Union murals, and Jane became Morris's wife in 1859.

The frescoes, done too soon and too fast, began to fade at once and now are barely decipherable.

​Literature was integrated into the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's artistic practice from the beginning (including that of Rossetti), with many paintings making direct literary references. For example, John Everett Millais' early work, Isabella (1849), depicts an episode from John Keats' Isabella, or, the Pot of Basil (1818).

Rossetti was particularly critical of the gaudy ornamentation of Victorian gift books and sought to refine bindings and illustrations to align with the principles of the Aesthetic Movement. Rossetti's key bindings were designed between 1861 and 1871. One of Rossetti's most prominent contributions to illustration was the collaborative book, Edward Moxon's 1857 edition of Poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

The Pre-Raphaelites’ visualization of Tennyson's poems indicated the range of possibilities in interpreting written works, as did their unique approach to visualizing narrative on the canvas.

Pre-Raphaelite illustrations do not simply refer to the text in which they appear; rather, they are part of a bigger program of art: the book as a whole.  Illustration is not subservient to text and vice versa. Careful and conscientious craftsmanship is practiced in every aspect of production, and each element, though qualifiedly artistic in its own right, contributes to a unified art object (the book).

In 1861, Rossetti became a founding partner in the decorative arts firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. with Morris, Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, Philip Webb, Charles Faulkner and Peter Paul Marshall. Rossetti contributed designs for stained glass and other decorative objects.

Rossetti's wife, Elizabeth, died of an overdose of laudanum in 1862, possibly a suicide, shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and on the death of his beloved Lizzie, buried the bulk of his unpublished poems with her at Highgate Cemetery, though he later had them dug up. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix.

In 1874, Morris reorganised his decorative arts firm, cutting Rossetti out of the business, and the polite fiction that both men were in residence with Jane Morris at Kelmscott could not be maintained. Rossetti abruptly left Kelmscott in July 1874 and never returned.

​Toward the end of his life, he sank into a morbid state, darkened by his drug addiction to chloral hydrate and increasing mental instability. He spent his last years as a recluse at Cheyne Walk.

Rossetti's incomplete picture Found, begun in 1853 and unfinished at his death, was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted from the street by a country drover who recognises his old sweetheart. 

On Easter Sunday, 1882, he died at the country house of a friend, where he had gone in a vain attempt to recover his health, which had been destroyed by chloral as his wife's had been destroyed by laudanum. He died of Bright's Disease, a disease of the kidneys from which he had been suffering for some time. He had been housebound for some years on account of paralysis of the legs, though his chloral addiction is believed to have been a means of alleviating pain from a botched hydrocele removal. He had been suffering from alcohol psychosis for some time brought on by the excessive amounts of whisky he used to drown out the bitter taste of the chloral hydrate. He is buried in the churchyard of All Saints at Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, England.

​Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens (11 May 1823 – 24 August 1906) was a Belgian painter, known for his paintings of elegant modern women. After gaining attention early in his career with a social realist painting depicting the plight of poor vagrants, he achieved great critical and popular success with his scenes of upper-middle class Parisian life. In their realistic style and careful finish, his works reveal the influence of 17th-century Dutch genre painting.

Alfred Stevens, né le 11 mai 1823 à Bruxelles et mort le 24 août 1906 à Paris, est un peintre belge. Sa carrière a connu une ascension fulgurante tant en Belgique qu'en France où il a passé la plus grande partie de sa vie. Très introduit dans les milieux artistiques et mondains de la capitale, il était l'ami d'Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Alexandre Dumas (fils) tandis que son frère, Arthur Stevens, marchand d'art installé à Paris et à Bruxelles, œuvrait pour faire connaître les peintres français. Stevens a en commun avec Manet un modèle féminin : Victorine Meurent qui pose pour Olympia.

D'abord en retrait du courant impressionniste, aimé pour ses scènes de genre dont le sujet est en majorité de jeunes élégantes, ses tableaux se vendent à des prix très élevés. Mais à partir de 1883, saisi d'un doute devant la montée de l'impressionnisme, Stevens a reconsidéré sa peinture et a réalisé des paysages impressionnistes. Pour l'Exposition universelle de Paris de 1889, il reçoit la commande d'une fresque, aujourd'hui propriété des musées des beaux arts de Bruxelles : Le Panorama du siècle. ​

​Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens was born in Brussels. He came from a family involved with the visual arts: his older brother Joseph (1816–1892) was painter, while another brother Arthur (1825–1899) was an art dealer and critic. His father, who had fought in the Napoleonic wars in the army of William I of the Netherlands, was an art collector who owned several watercolors by Eugène Delacroix, among other artists. His mother's parents ran Café de l'Amitié in Brussels, a meeting place for politicians, writers, and artists. All the Stevens children benefited from the people they met there, and the social skills they acquired in growing up around important people.

After the death of his father in 1837, Stevens left middle school to begin study at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he knew François Navez, the Neo-Classical painter and former student of Jacques-Louis David who was its director and an old friend of Stevens's grandfather. Following a traditional curriculum, he drew from casts of classical sculpture for the first two years, and then drew from live models. In 1843, Stevens went to Paris, joining his brother Joseph who already was there. He was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, the most important art school in Paris. Although it is said that he became a student of its director Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, this is likely not true. An early picture by Stevens, The Pardon or Absolution (Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg), signed and dated 1849, shows his mastery of a conventional naturalistic style which owes much to 17th-century Dutch genre painting. Like the Belgian painter and friend with whom he stayed in Paris, Florent Willems (1823–1905), Stevens carefully studied works by painters such as Gerard ter Borch and Gabriel Metsu.

Stevens's work was shown publicly for the first time in 1851, when three of his paintings were admitted to the Brussels Salon. He was awarded a third-class medal at the Paris Salon in 1853, and a second-class medal at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1855. His Ce qu'on appelle le vagabondage (What is called vagrancy) (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) attracted the attention of Napoleon III who, as a result of the scene in the picture, ordered that soldiers no longer be used to pick up the poor from the streets. 

During the 1860s, Stevens became an immensely successful painter, known for his paintings of elegant modern women. In 1863, he received the Legion of Honor (Chevalier) from the French government.

​His exhibits at the Salons in Paris and Brussels attracted favorable critical attention and buyers. An excellent example of his work during this time is La Dame en Rose or Woman in Pink (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels), painted in 1866, which combines a view of a fashionably dressed woman in an interior with a detailed examination of Japanese objects, a fashionable taste called Japonisme of which Stevens was an early enthusiast.

The single most important work from the second half of Stevens's career is the monumental Panorama du Siècle, 1789–1889, which he painted with Henri Gervex. Stevens painted the women and details and Gervex the men, with the help of fifteen assistants. It was shown to great acclaim at the International Exhibition held in Paris in 1889. He also received several great professional tributes. In 1895, a large exhibition of his work was held in Brussels. In 1900, Stevens was honored by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris with the first retrospective exhibition ever given to a living artist. Supported by patrons led by the Comtesse de Greffulhe, it achieved social cachet as well as popular success. In 1905, he was the only living artist allowed to exhibit in a retrospective show of Belgian art in Brussels. Despite these exhibitions, he was not able to sell enough of his work to manage well financially.

Alfred Stevens died in Paris in 1906, having outlived his brothers and most of his friends.

En 1858, il épouse Marie Blanc. Il a pour témoins Alexandre Dumas (fils), Eugène Delacroix et un grand nombre de personnalités des arts.

À partir de 1860, il connaît un énorme succès grâce à ses tableaux de jeunes femmes habillées à la dernière mode posant dans des intérieurs élégants, à la fois intimistes et mondains. Ceux exposés au Salon de peinture et de sculpture de 1861 lui valent un grand nombre d'admirateurs. Il présente entre autres : Tous les bonheurs ayant pour sujet une femme allaitant, huile sur toile, 116,5 × 89,5 cm, Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique, à Bruxelles, Une Veuve et ses enfants, huile sur toile, 114,5 × 160,5 cm, Musées royaux, Mauvaise nouvelle, encore intitulée La Lettre de rupture, huile sur toile 745 × 54 cm conservée au musée d'Orsay, Le Bouquet surprise, Une mère, Le convalescent...

C'est encore par l'intermédiaire d'Alfred Stevens que Manet va faire la connaissance du marchand de tableaux Paul Durand-Ruel, et de son cercle de relations : Degas, Morisot. Tout-Paris fréquente désormais l'atelier de Stevens situé d'abord au 12, rue Laval qui deviendra, le 10 juin 1885, le second cabaret du Chat Noir de Rodolphe Salis dans les locaux du peintre, puis rue des Martyrs et, à partir de 1880, rue de Calais. Goncourt qui lui rend souvent visite décrit le luxe dans lequel il vit.

À cette même époque, Stevens a créé un atelier de peinture pour femmes avenue Frochot, fréquenté par Sarah Bernhardt dont le peintre fera le portrait. Parmi les élèves les plus assidues de cette école, qui selon l'auteur belge Camille Lemonnier « avait été en son temps la plus belle école de Paris... » certaines se consacreront entièrement à la peinture et seront des artistes reconnues de leur temps comme Louise Desbordes, Alix d'Anethan, Georgette Meunier, Clémence Roth ou Berthe Art. Il faut noter que cette école de peinture pour femmes fut le seul lieu ou s'exerça à proprement dit le professorat de Stevens qui n'avait pas de collaborateurs et ne forma pas de continuateurs. Outre Sarah Bernhardt qui fut une de ses premières élèves et dont le peintre a réalisé plusieurs portraits, il est probable que certaines de ses élèves lui ont servi de modèle en même temps qu'il leur rendait hommage en les immortalisant sur la toile, telle Louise Desbordes pour le portrait en pied de la jeune artiste lyrique dans le tableau Un chant passionné ou Clémence Roth représentant la parisienne amatrice d'art vêtue de noir en allusion à son veuvage dans le tableau Dans l'atelier.

La mort de Manet, en 1883 va beaucoup l'affecter. Stevens traverse une période de doute devant l'arrivée de l'impressionnisme. Commence alors une période de recherche dans laquelle Berthe Morisot joue un rôle prépondérant.

​Dans les années 1880 Stevens traverse une crise morale qui l'amène à remettre en question tout ce qu'il fait. Élève d'Ingres, souvent proche de Gustave Courbet, ou de Manet avec Ophelia. C'est le cas de La Jeune mère qui rappelle le style de Berthe Morisot.

Ses peintures s'arrachent, le roi des Belges lui commande Les Quatre saisons, les Vanderbilt lui achètent des toiles au prix fort, et pourtant, vers 1883, saisi à la fois d'une grande fatigue physique et d'un doute sur son travail, Stevens part à Menton sur les conseils de son médecin. Et là, il se livre à des expérimentations : des paysages impressionnistes.

Il peint aussi des marines et des scènes côtières dans un style plus libre, presque impressionniste, proche d'Eugène Boudin ou de Johan Barthold Jongkind.

Vers la fin de sa vie, son style n’est pas sans similitude avec celui de son contemporain John Singer Sargent.

Il publie en 1886 Impressions sur la peinture, qui connaît un grand succès.

Il arrête de peindre à partir des années 1890 à la suite de problèmes de santé. C'est, en 1900, le premier artiste vivant à obtenir une exposition individuelle à l’École des beaux-arts de Paris.