“I didn’t want to go to a prison and hang out with a psychopath,” he says. “I gave them the script and said, ‘Try to distill the essence of who this man might be, his psychopathic tendencies.’ So I approached it from that side, and then I approached it from a visual side.”

Gone are the Savile Row suits, the Omega watches, and any semblance of suaveness. Brosnan went the opposite direction with Julian, building his look from the ground up, starting with some “really nasty Italian boots. They look so clownish but so sexual. I mean, like Jon Voight from Midnight Cowboy. Then it was tight shirts, tight pants, and the gold chain.”

Don’t forget the mustache, a big, bushy lip-caterpillar that would have made Magnum P.I. envious, and which set an unfortunate trend during the $10 million, tequila-fueled, 40-day shoot in Mexico City. “Everyone grew a mustache on the movie,” says Beau St. Clair, Brosnan’s longtime friend and partner in DreamTime. “It started with Pierce. He showed up at the office with it. And then the next time that Greg Kinnear came for a fitting, he had a mustache. Richard Shepard grew a mustache. But then it was crazy. The crew photos are funny because everyone has a mustache.”

But perhaps the most daring subversion of Brosnan’s dapper image is the scene where Julian walks through a hotel lobby to the pool in nothing but boots and a tiny swimsuit, which the actor refers to as “the mankini. I forgot to suck in the stomach that day.” He laughs. “Beau said, ‘You don’t have to do this. And I said, ‘Fuck it. I’m fifty years old, for Christ’s sake. I’ve done Bond. I can do anything I want to do.’ ”

“Pierce just fully went for it,” Shepard says. “I said early on, ‘If he doesn’t give 110 percent this is not going to work.’ It’s not one of those roles where you can charm your way through. Pierce is an incredibly accomplished actor, and he’s very funny. I don’t want to sound like some asshole blowing smoke, but the fact is that it’s true, and the movie is much better for it.”

The Matador wrapped in the spring of 2004. Brosnan hasn’t made a movie in more than a year, a fact that “scares the shit” out of him. But not too much. He’s been spending his time jogging, playing golf, and painting. And in a few days, he’ll be heading off for a vacation at his Hawaiian hideaway with wife Keely and young sons Dylan Thomas and Paris Beckett.

Meanwhile, he’s been getting the usual offers to play spies, jewel thieves, and the like. But “Pierce is ready to take on bigger challenges now,” St. Clair says. “Bond was an amazing opportunity to have a global awareness of his abilities, but it was a character that was already established. He now has to go in a new direction. I think he’ll do edgier things.”

Brosnan says he’s ready to write the next chapter in his life and is gearing up for several projects, many of which he also plans to produce. “The greatest joy is making my own movies,” he says. On the docket is Butterfly on a Wheel, a thriller about a couple who are kidnapped by a maniacal stranger (played by Brosnan), which he hopes to shoot in San Francisco. “It’s a story about love, obsession, and extreme emotions of hate,” he says.

But first, he’ll star opposite Liam Neeson in Seraphim Falls, an action-heavy, psychologically driven drama set at the end of the Civil War, for Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions.The Topkapi Affair is actively being developed with DreamTime and Sony, and he’s working with Danny DeVito and Morgan Freeman on an adaptation of the children’s book The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. And there will most likely be other offers, and opportunities, after The Matador hits theaters.

“Hopefully, people will dig the movie, love it and say, ‘Shit, man, that was cool. I didn’t expect that from him,’ ” he says. “Just keep moving on is really the motto to be learned here.” He thinks for a minute. “Hopefully, it will make a shitload of money,” he adds. “That would also be nice.”