Chris Vognar

Actor studied up for a killer of a role in 'Matador'

01:59 PM CST on Friday, January 6, 2006

By CHRIS VOGNAR / The Dallas Morning News

TORONTO – In The Matador, Pierce Brosnan plays self-loathing assassin Julian, who strikes up an odd friendship with Greg Kinnear's struggling salesman Danny in a Mexico City hotel bar. The former James Bond pitched the film during the media feeding frenzy of the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Surprise: He was sick of discussing 007.

Question: What could you relate to about this guy?

Answer: Not a lot, really. He's a psychopath. I don't have any of those tendencies, I don't think. Psychopaths are the great manipulators of our society. I took the text to a criminal psychologist in LA, and she gave me certain inroads which concurred with my own sense of what I thought he was about. His aloneness, his adriftness from life in his own psyche and soul.

Question: Was it fun?

Answer: Oh, it was great. He's so irreverent, and he has this caustic wit to him. It just kind of burns.

Question: How many James Bond questions have you gotten today?

Answer: There have been quite a few. I'm not answering them anymore. I'm sick of answering them.

Question: This is a big film for the Weinstein Co., which bought it at the last Sundance Film Festival.

Answer: I'm honored that Harvey [Weinstein] bought this.

He's flamboyant, charismatic, entrepreneurial. He's a maverick. And he's created and spawned many a fine film that lives on, thanks to his tenacity and bravado and spirit. That he would pick this up at Sundance was a real shot in the arm to all of us.

Question: What was the best thing about shooting in Mexico City?

Answer: It's a mass of humanity. It's a kaleidoscopic mass. It's the most textural city of the planet. It's so diverse.

We encountered many people who embraced us as filmmakers in a small community of filmmakers. We kind of came in under the radar with this one, although my profile is pretty high in the sense of having been James Bond. It was very comfortable. But you have to keep your wits about you. Don't go into certain neighborhoods alone, or in the little green taxis. You get into those, and you can end up in the wrong place with the wrong people.

Question: Julian meets Danny in a hotel bar. Have you had any memorable or strange hotel bar encounters?

Answer: I met a sniper once, about 11 years ago in Zagreb. He was a painfully sad guy and not too young either. We got very drunk, and he talked about the killings and I became his priest for a couple of hours. He talked about killing women and children. Very painful.

Question: Did he recognize you?

Answer: Yeah, he knew who I was. I hadn't played Bond yet; he just knew I was an actor. He was going back up to the front in a couple of days, and he was having a hard time knowing he was going to have to kill. I was in the bar, and this guy came in wearing full camouflage. We were all drinking. He took out a grenade, pulled out the pin, put it in a beer mug, took out his bayonet and started banging the side of the glass. I don't know what happened next. I ran.

E-mail cvognar@dallasnews.com