Pierce Brosnan reveals why his new role in sports film Giant took him back to earliest days as an actor

Pierce Brosnan had a pretty busy 2025 – with roles in everything from The Thursday Murder Club and Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag to a leading part in Guy Ritchie's crime series Mobland – and just a week or so into the new year, he's back on the big screen again.

This time around, the former Bond star has a key role in boxing biopic Giant, which tells the story of the life and career of '90s boxing legend Prince Naseem Hamed through the lens of his relationship with longtime coach Brendan Ingle.

Brosnan plays Sheffield-based Irishman Ingle (who passed away in 2018) opposite Amir El-Masry's electrifying turn as Hamed, with the film exploring how what started as an extremely strong bond took a sad turn after the boxer's career really took off.

Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com ahead of the film's release, Brosnan explained how he would watch interview clips of Ingle "endlessly" while preparing for the role, listening to his voice and "his philosophy of life" – which he says chimed with his own views of the world, harking back to when he was starting out as an actor.

"[It] was something I could identify with as an actor and as the younger man I was," he explained. "For me, when I found theatre, I found it through a wonderful house called the Ovalhouse Theatre, which was in Brixton, South London, Oval. And so I could identify, from a creative aspect, the heartbeat and the kind of essence of the man."

Ingle ran a boxing gym in Sheffield for years as part of an initiative to give young people more of a direction in life, and in doing so helped launch the career of several prominent boxers, also including Johnny Nelson, Herol "Bomber" Graham, Junior Witter, and Kell Brook.

He served as Hamed's mentor for 18 years – from when he was seven until he was 25 – but their relationship broke down in part due to an arrangement which saw Ingle take 25 per cent of the boxer's earnings.

This fallout is explored in detail in the film, and asked if he could understand Hamed's reasons for turning against Ingle, Brosnan explained that he "didn't get tangled up in that kind of psychology".

He added: "I came to it as a father. I played it as a father/son relationship. But again, with all of the ingredients – the anger, the determination, the ambition, the burning ambition of both men, both men being kind of outsiders within a community in a space of history and time – that's what I identified with.

"I'm powerless to actually define what happens to the relationship thereafter," he continued. "For me, Brendan Ingle was a saintly man.

"He was this man who really took care of a community, took care of his wife, his family, and [had a] burning passion to be great. And then he found the greatness in Prince Naseem, this young man."

El-Masry added: "There's a beautiful tenderness to that, in a way. How, a man [who's] not sought out to make millions, but sought out to build a safe community for these young men to kind of get off the streets and be safe in a place where they feel welcomed, regardless of what background they're from."

Giant is now showing in UK cinemas.

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