The tragedy of losing his family and trying to reunite with his son, actor Pierce Brosnan between pain and brilliance
Pierce Brosnan has lived a life of contrasts: cinematic brilliance and personal wounds that never healed. The 72-year-old actor was recently seen in Notting Hill with his 52-year-old son, Christopher, after years of separation and silence. It was the first time in a long time that father and son appeared together, showing that the wounds between them are starting to heal.
Christopher is the son of Brosnan’s first wife, actress Cassandra Harris, whom he adopted, along with his sister Charlotte, when their biological father died. Brosnan and Harris married in 1980, but their life together was cut short in 1991 when she died of ovarian cancer at the age of 43, on the same day as their 11th wedding anniversary.
“She’s inside me every day. She gave me everything, the man I am, the father I became,” Brosnan told People a year later.
As the actor revealed in a touching confession, Cassandra died in his arms, with Christopher present and Charlotte talking on the phone. “We were all together. That’s how she left,” he said in the confession.
After her death, Brosnan found support again in journalist and model Keely Shay Smith, with whom he had two sons: Dylan and Paris. He has admitted that she was the “compass” that helped him grieve properly. But in 2013, the cycle of grief opened up again when Charlotte died at the age of 42, from the same disease that had killed his mother.
“My daughter fought with dignity and courage. We hope that one day there will be a cure for this disease,” Brosnan said at the time, rushing from the set to say goodbye. At a “Stand Up For Cancer” event a year later, he said simply: “I held my wife’s hand. And then, years later, my daughter’s hand. That pain never goes away. You just learn to live with it.”
His relationship with Christopher was difficult. His son had been involved in addiction and had been convicted of crimes that had taken him away from his family. Brosnan stated in 2005: “I love him, but I had to let him find his own way. I said to him, ‘Live or die trying.’ It was the cruelest thing I’ve ever said.”
However, today everything indicates that the two men are making a new start. Father and son were photographed together again, smiling, at the same table. “They were relaxed, laughing, as if they had put the past behind them,” a source told the Mirror.
