November 17, 1995 | For the Ian Fleming purists and the Sean Connery devotees, Roger Moore was nothing but a fatuous pretender. And while Timothy Dalton arguably came closest to personifying the suave savage of Fleming's novels, he was too intense to crack wise or chase babes in the classic 007 manner.

So now it's up to Pierce Brosnan, the latest actor to be cast as superspy James Bond in the world's longest-running, most successful movie series, to satisfy the fans and jump-start the stalled franchise in the newest 007 adventure, GoldenEye.

"It's gone full circle, from Connery to me," Brosnan noted during a recent Los Angeles interview. "It started with a Celt, and it's come back to a Celt. One happens to be Scottish, one happens to be Irish. And the darkness of both our souls and hearts, I think, is in there, in the character. I'd like to think so, anyway.

"Sean Connery was the man. And he's still the man, in my book. He is the Bond, even though I've done the blasted thing. But there's still a great sense of achievement on my part."

Certainly, the producers feel the 42-year-old Brosnan is the right man for the job: As far back as 1986, they wanted to cast former Remington Steele star as Her Majesty's most famous secret agent. In fact, it was only after Brosnan proved unable to free himself from TV commitments that they went with Dalton. Unfortunately for Dalton, his two hard-edged Bondwagons failed to click with 007 fans. Fortunately for Brosnan, the producers decided to go back to their original choice.

"Dalton is a good, solid, serious actor," says long-time Bond movie producer Michael G. Wilson. "A sort of antidote to the direction that Moore had taken.

"But I think with Brosnan, it's a different combination altogether. He has the sort of Moore qualities as the charming romantic. And he has the comic wit. But he also has menace. He's a great physical actor -- he does a lot of his own fights and stunts. And he has a slight vulnerability. Which I think is necessary in this particular film, because it's a story of treason and betrayal. And he has to be convincing as he registers this betrayal. Which I think Brosnan can do."

Brosnan comes by this vulnerability the hard way: From 1988 to 1992, he watched his beloved wife, actress Cassandra Harris, slowly die of ovarian cancer. (The actor’s voice catches slightly, but perceptibly, when he harkens back to the tragic ending of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and pointedly reminds an interviewer: “You know, of course, that James Bond lost his wife…”) Ironically, Harris had played a supporting role in an earlier Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only, and shared Brosnan's bitter disappointment when he was unable to accept the first offer to play 007.

"So I wanted (GoldenEye) to be rich and exciting -- for Cassie," Brosnan said. "There was not a day on the set that I did not think of her. And how she would have relished it, the whole hoopla of stepping out into the lights. Because it's a hoot, it's great fun."

At the same time, however, Brosnan felt a fair amount of trepidation during the initial stages of filming GoldenEye.

"At the beginning," Brosnan admitted, "I kept thinking they were going to take it away from me. So, for the first three or four weeks, I just held my breath. When I first said yes to the role a second time, I found myself thinking, `OK, is this going to happen? What's going to go wrong? What could possibly go wrong so that I'm not going to do that role?'"

Asked if those worries were partly due to his dark Irish temperament, Brosnan laughed. But he did not smile.

"There is something there within me, as a man, as Pierce. And I'm not sure where it comes from. But, yes, it creeps over you at times. It's like a foreboding or, well, a feeling of not belonging, of not being in the right place. Maybe it's part of being Irish, or because I left Ireland as young boy, and moved to England, where I was made to feel very Irish by the British. I don't know...

"But, you know, Bond certainly has a dark side. This is a man who's a widower. This is a man who is a commander. This is a man who knows how to intimidate people. This is a man who fills his own space. This is a man who has an incredible sexual appetite. This is a man who's searching, who goes through many women. What is he looking for? Why doesn't he settle? What is he scared of? What drives him on?

"And what makes him stay alive?"

So how does it feel to know that, as an Irishman, he's talking over the role of the most famous British literary hero since Sherlock Holmes?

“Oh,” Brosnan replied with not-entirely-convincing modesty, “I don’t think about things like that. I’m merely serving the role and…”

Yeah, right. But how does it feel?

“Well,” Brosnan admitted with chuckle, “it feels pretty damn good, actually...”