AARP Hearing Center
Pierce Brosnan, 73, Feels ‘the Tick of Time’ and Wants New Challenges
The former James Bond on life with his wife, Keely, and why he wants another shot at an on-screen love story
3-minute read
Pierce Brosnan, seen here in London on Sept. 10, 2026, still finds work that challenges him, after spending decades acting and painting.
Matt Crossick/Variety via Getty Images
Key takeaways
- Pierce Brosnan calls playing a volatile crime boss in MobLand liberating after decades as a polished leading man.
- He and his wife, Keely, have been married for 25 years. “We like each other, challenge each other,” he says.
- While he has an appetite for a challenge, psychologists cited by AARP recommend setting manageable goals.
Pierce Brosnan made his name playing men who rarely lose their cool. At 73, the former James Bond is enjoying the freedom of coming unglued on screen.
In the Paramount+ series MobLand, he plays Conrad Harrigan, a volatile crime boss married to Helen Mirren’s Maeve. The role takes him far from the polished leading men he played on TV’s Remington Steele, four Bond films and The Thomas Crown Affair.
More Ways to Benefit
- Related Benefit 1
- Related Benefit 2
- Related Benefit 3
- Related Benefit 4
- Related Benefit 5
“It’s been so liberating,” he told Mirren in a Sept. 30 conversation for Interview.
Brosnan credits Bond with making his current career possible. But being so closely identified with one character also means seeking out work that lets him do something different.
As he told Mirren, he tries to “find work for yourself where you can really, really challenge yourself.”
In a separate Sept. 11 interview with The Times, Brosnan reflected on the looks that helped build his career and how he feels about aging.
“I’ve been defined by this visage,” he said. “I have nothing but gratitude for the Celtic alchemy that was bestowed upon me. So far, so good. Long may it last. It will creep up on me. You can feel the tick of time at 73. But I’ve been blessed with good genes.”
He still has roles he wants to pursue.
“I’d like to have a crack at one more love story,” he told The Times. “I love romance.”
Off-screen, Brosnan and his wife, Keely, have been married for 25 years. They met in Mexico in 1994, where she was working as a journalist.
“We like each other, challenge each other,” he told The Times. Their disagreements can be as ordinary as the sand he tracks into the house. He says he takes out the trash, empties the dishwasher and does the laundry. Keely handles the cooking.
Brosnan’s willingness to test himself extends beyond acting. Just before turning 70 in May 2023, he opened his first solo art exhibition, “So Many Dreams,” in Los Angeles.
He had wanted to be an artist as a teenager and returned to painting in 1987. For decades, he stored his work or gave it away before assembling paintings, sketches and other pieces for the show.
“It started in ’87, so it’s quite a long journey of painting and putting them in storage and giving them away,” he told People at the time. “And the evolution has become more mature and more necessary in my life as I get older — and my birthday of 70 years on the planet is just in spitting distance, as it were, so we decided to have the show to put it all together.”
Even after years of practice, he still finds projects that test his patience. In his garage studio, he showed The Times a copy he was painting of Paul Gauguin’s Red Dog.
“Someone said you should think about painting an artist that you love,” he said. “I love this painting, so I thought I’d have a crack at it. The thing is, it’s just taken me forever to paint.”
Even after decades of acting and painting, Brosnan still finds work that tests him. Taking on that kind of challenge can expand your sense of what you’re capable of, according to AARP’s “A Midlife Guide to Learning Something New.”
Start with realistic expectations. “Best to set goals that you can see,” writes Tom Vanderbilt, citing psychologist Kenneth Nowack’s advice to break long-term goals into smaller, manageable steps.
Give an interest time to develop. Drawing on research by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues, Vanderbilt writes: “More than ‘finding your passion,’ you may have to work hard to see it blossom into passion.”
Taking a class can help. “In a ‘learning community’ we not only learn from others who might be better than we are, but we also learn by teaching others who might be worse than we are at something,” Vanderbilt writes. “We even learn from seeing the mistakes of others.”
And there’s no requirement to excel. As Vanderbilt puts it: “Don’t treat a new pursuit as another job; this means giving yourself permission to be mediocre.”
AARP Membership
Join AARP for only $15 per year with automatic renewal. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of benefits, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP The Magazine.
More From AARP
Alan Alda, 90, on Life With Parkinson’s
Putting socks on by himself was cause to celebrate for the ‘M*A*S*H’ actor
Kristin Scott Thomas Weighs a Facelift
The actor says she has tried lasers and buccal massage but has had no invasive work
Stallone on Bulimia and Steroid Use
The actor says his pursuit of a ‘Rocky III’ physique became an extreme obsession