Why Pierce Brosnan had to walk away from troubled Love Island star son Chris – after heroin addiction left him in a coma
HE’S a huge Hollywood name – and was once one of the most lusted after men in the world thanks to his starring role in James Bond.
But Pierce Brosnan’s family life has been plagued with tragedy – having lost both his first wife and daughter to ovarian cancer.
Pierce, 71, found love again with his second wife Keely Shaye Smith, but more heartache was to come when his son Chris went into a downward spiral of cocaine and heroin abuse.
The actor was left powerless to help as Love Island star Chris’ drug addiction led to multiple arrests and he even fell into a coma following an overdose.
Pierce eventually cut him off for refusing to kick the drugs – a decision the actor found “painful,” having been a doting adopted father to him and his sister Charlotte, who tragically died in 2013.
This weekend, filmmaker Chris, now 51, was seen shopping in London, looking unrecognisable from his Love Island days, with long, dishevelled hair.
Psychologist Jo Hemmings fears there’s a way back for Pierce and Chris, after a rift lasting 19 years.
She says: “I think it’s really sad that they’re estranged.
“It’s been almost 20 years, that they’ve had any proper communication, and I think that’s an incredibly long time to actually get back together in any sense at all.
“It would take a real crisis for Chris to accept Pierce reaching out and I don’t think Chris would do it himself.”
We reveal the turbulent relationship which “tested the family” and drove Pierce to walk away from his son…
‘I became Dad’
Pierce met Chris’ mum Cassandra Harris at the house of a mutual friend, in 1977.
She was married to Dermot Harris – brother of the late Harry Potter star Richard Harris – at the time, and had two children, Chris and Charlotte.
Pierce, then 24, arrived in bicycle clips and slicked back hair looking “ridiculous” but was “bowled over by the beauty” of the sophisticated actress, five years his senior.
The couple went on to marry, two years after her 1978 divorce, and in 1986, when their dad passed away, Pierce adopted Charlotte, then 15, and Chris, 14.
Despite not being their biological father, Pierce saw them as his own.
“We just clicked as a family,” Pierce once said. “To begin with I was Pierce, then I was Daddy Pierce, and then I just became Dad. Charlotte and Chris have just been amazing in my life.”
When baby Sean arrived in 1983, the family seemed complete but happiness was short-lived for the devoted couple.
In 1987, just a year after Dermot died, Cassie was diagnosed with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer and the children faced losing a second parent.
The 43-year-old actress passed away in December 1991, close to the couple’s 11th wedding anniversary, in what Pierce called “the longest night of my life.”
Pierce was lying by her side in a hospital bed as she passed away and he later told People magazine: “I was in a helpless state of…confusion and anger. She was comforting me.”
He added: “She has made me the man I am, the actor I am, the father I am.
“She’s forever embedded in every fibre of my being. She’s there with me every day. I was so blessed to have met someone like that.”
Christopher was just 19 when he lost his his mum and Pierce told People: “I can see the pain in Christopher’s eyes, the absence in his heart for his mother.”
Downwards drug spiral
Pierce’s heartbreak over Cassandra initially led him to think he would never find love again but all that changed when he met Keely Shaye Smith in a Mexican bar in 1994.
The pair tied the knot in a £1.5m wedding in 2001 and went on to have two children Dylan, now 27, and Paris, 23.
The former model, who he calls my “North star” helped him move on but he is open that Cassie remains in his thoughts.
“I know what it is like to be a widower and what it is like to find love again. So I know there’s hope and that you have to learn to get on with it,” he told the Mirror.
“But the memory of Cassie and her fight against cancer is never forgotten.”
It’s painful because you shut down. You never completely cut them off, but I have cut Christopher off. I had to say, ‘Go. Get busy living, or get busy dying’.
Pierce Brosnan
While Pierce was able to find happiness again, Chris got hooked on cocaine and heroin after his mother died, and his life began to spiral out of control.
In 1997, he was handed a three-month prison sentence for drink-driving.
Chris was also involved in a massive brawl at Browns nightclub in London and was later banned from the venue.
He was then arrested for theft at another London club Chinawhite, but charges were later dropped.
After reaching out with offers of help proved futile, Pierce took the difficult decision to walk away.
In an interview with Playboy in 2005, he said: “Christopher is still very lost. Shockingly so. I know where he is but he’s having a hard life.
“I can only have strong faith and believe he will recover. He has tested everybody in this family but none more so than himself. He knows how to get out. He doesn’t want to.
“It’s painful because you shut down. You never completely cut them off, but I have cut Christopher off. I had to say, ‘Go. Get busy living, or get busy dying’.
“He has my prayers.”
That year, Chris starred on the original series of Love Island alongside Paul Danan and Brendan Cole, coupling up with Sophie Anderton and Lady Victoria Hervey.
But his career sank without trace after leaving the reality show and, while Pierce and Christopher have occasionally spent time together, the pair have a difficult relationship.
In 2012 Chris, was rushed to hospital in Paddington after lapsing into a coma after a night out in the West End.
Another tragic death
Chris suffered another blow when his sister Charlotte was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, 22 years after their mother.
The mum-of-two passed away in June 2013, days after marrying partner Alex Smith, leaving behind daughter Sophie, then 15, and son Lucas, 10.
In a statement Pierce said: “Charlotte fought her cancer with grace and humanity, courage and dignity. Our hearts are heavy with the loss of our beautiful dear girl.
“We pray for her and that the cure for this wretched disease will be close at hand soon.”
To watch someone you love have his or her life eaten away bit by bit by this insidious disease, that kind of sorrow becomes an indelible part of your psyche.
Pierce Brosnan
Pierce admits that losing the two women he loved so dearly had left him with bouts of depression.
“I don’t look at the cup as half full, believe me. The dark, melancholy Irish dog sits beside me from time to time,” he told Esquire.
“To watch someone you love have his or her life eaten away bit by bit by this insidious disease, that kind of sorrow becomes an indelible part of your psyche.”
But he says Keely helped through his personal tragedies with “a strength I wouldn’t be able to live without.”
However his relationship with Chris had remained strained.
In a Father’s Day post back in June 2022, Pierce seemingly reached out to him, writing: “My love forever to you dear sons, Paris, Dylan, Sean and Christopher, thank you deeply for your love on this Father’s Day.”
But while his other three sons, Paris, Dylan and Sean, were in the picture with Pierce, Chris was nowhere to be seen.
‘Keely is my North Star’
Pierce and Keely now live as quietly as possible, away from the limelight, at their $100 million (£79m), eco-friendly Malibu mansion, which is made from recycled wood and has a Zen garden complete with intricately carved doors and Buddha statues.
They spend their time between there and a five-acres, oceanfront estate in Kauai, Hawaii.
While the memory of first wife Cassandra is always there in the marriage, Keely had proved the rock Pierce needed to carry on.
“Keely has always been kind and compassionate and encouraged me to mourn Cassie,” he said.
“I think of her all the time. I suppose Keely is my North Star, always looking out for me.”
Keely has always been kind and compassionate and encouraged me to mourn Cassie. I think of her all the time. I suppose Keely is my North Star, always looking out for me.
Pierce Brosnan
Last year, marking their 22nd anniversary, Pierce told Fox News: “We like each other a lot. We love each other a lot.
“And we’ve been down the road, and we’ve seen many, many hardships as families do, as we all do.
“But watching someone grow up with you and grow old with you is a very spiritual journey.
“To watch each other change… whatever it may be, the hair, the waist. But it’s the love in the heart. Keeley is a journalist, a reporter. She’s an artist in her own right.
“And as a woman, she has made a family for our sons. She allows me to go out into the wild blue yonder and do what I do as a man, as an actor, [she] always has.”
And the feeling is clearly mutual.
On Father’s Day this year, along with a picture of Pierce beaming, Keely wrote: “Happy Father’s Day my love. You fill our lives with endless beauty, curiosity, joy and sunshine.
‘No way back’
Due to both Chris and Pierce both losing loved ones, relationship expert Jo can see the rift from both sides.
She explains: “They’ve both been through horrendous tragedies.
“For Chris’ father to die, then to lose his mum to ovarian cancer then and lose his sister to it too, you can see how he would have taken to heroin and cocaine as a coping mechanism.
“He looked so promising back in the day, and he was hugely supported by Pierce, who adopted him and encouraged him.
“He just couldn’t cope. He couldn’t deal with the tragedy in his life, and took himself off really into drugs.”
Pierce Brosnan's tragic life
Pierce Brosnan's life has been full of heartache and tragedy..
1986 – The biological father of Pierce’s first wife Cassandra’s two children, Charlotte and Chris, passed away, which led him to become their adopted dad. They were just 14 and 15 at the time.
1987 – Pierce’s wife Cassie was diagnosed with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer and the children faced losing a second parent.
December 1991 – Cassie passed away in what Pierce called “the longest night of my life.”
1997 – Having become hooked on drugs, Chris was arrested for drink-driving.
2005 – Pierce confessed he’d made the “painful” decision to cut Chris off, after trying to plead with him to get off the drugs.
June 2013 – Pierce’s adopted daughter Charlotte died from ovarian cancer, 22 years after her mother Cassie.
She continues: “When parents are desperate for their kids to get off drugs, there are two sorts of approaches.
“I’m sure Pierce tried the kindness and the encouragement, money for rehabilitation, whatever, but I think his Chris was on such a poor trajectory that in the end, Pierce just said, ‘Okay, that’s it. I can’t do anything to help you.’
“The last resort is estrangement, and Pierce did reach out to him in that beautiful Father’s Day post, two years ago, but nothing happened from it.
“Chris is just hostile to any reconciliation now. I think, possibly what makes it feel worse, for Chris, is that his adopted father has found happiness again.
“He lives an incredibly healthy lifestyle, he’s in his 70s now, and he looks incredible.”
She finishes: “They’re such different people, and they’ve chosen such different responses to grief. That is the big barrier between the two of them.
“I’m sure they think about each other a lot, but the longer a rift goes on, the harder it is to get things back to normal again.”