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Much of the credit for the aging spy's resuscitation goes to producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson. The daughter and stepson of franchise co-founder Albert (Cubby) Broccoli, the two run EON--an acronym for "Everything or Nothing"--the company based in London that has produced all the official Bond films. (Never Say Never Again, in which Connery played 007 for the first time in a dozen years, is considered a rogue agent.) When Cubby's health began to fail in the 1990s, the pair stepped up to take his place. Wilson had been co-producing since 1985's A View to a Kill, and Barbara had been an assistant director and associate producer in the 1980s (see box). Their first effort: GoldenEye, a high-tech, high-speed 1995 hit that proved 007 could compete with the big-bang action pictures while keeping some of his cheeky, retro spirit. Since then, the competition has only got brasher and more explosive, with plenty of pretenders to the throne--most recently, Vin Diesel's XXX, a postmodern grunge Bond who traded in his tux for tattoos. Says XXX director Rob Cohen: Bond "never learns anything ... He doesn't do much of anything except be titanium and eternally stuck in a time capsule."
Brosnan, who brought the series back to life--and is paid a reported $15 million a picture to keep the franchise alive--was once the Bond that got away. In 1986 he had to turn down an offer to play the role because he couldn't get out of his Remington Steele TV contract. But he was ready to take the part when asked again in 1994. After Roger Moore's ironic, almost geriatric Bond, and then Timothy Dalton's leaden, I'm-really-a-serious-actor Bond, the debonair Irishman has reinvigorated the old spy and started to make the character his own. Although he delivers Bond-mots with requisite panache, Brosnan plays the part straighter and steelier than Moore did, and he's plainly more comfortable in 007's skin than Dalton was. On the beachside set in Cadiz, he slips into and out of the role, puffing a Cuban cigar all the while. Playing Bond "is bloody hard work," he says during a break from filming. "Trying to hit that note correctly--with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek, yet also trying to play him with a certain reality--can be tricky."
Brosnan's eight-year delay helped him build a better Bond. Age weathered some of his pretty-boy sheen; a few more lines on his face, a touch more flesh at his jawline, and he began to look like a man who had survived a few too many fights and a few too many cocktails. By now, his fourth time in the role, "the part has become second nature in some respects," he says. "I've grown into it--or at least I'd like to think I have."