Goldeneye

Top 10 Fun Facts

1. TV's Remington Steele missed out on playing James Bond in The Living Daylights because of his television obligations. The golden opportunity knocked a second time and Pierce Bronson was finally able to fulfill his dream of playing the Secret Agent 007 in Goldeneye.
2. For many, Pierce Brosnan was considered the obvious choice to play James Bond in Goldeneye. This was not the case for Mel Gibson, Hugh Grant, Sam Neill, Liam Neeson, or Lambert Wilson who were equally as eager to step into 007's designer shoes.
3. Since production started after the the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Goldeneye had the unique opportunity of filming in Russia's St. Petersburg. Despite the opening up of the Soviet Block, many British locations double for Russian ones. Filmmakers were shooting on a budget and it was much cheaper to film closer to home.
4. The original plot of Goldeneye appeared to be an exact copy of the film True Lies, so several changes had to be made to the script during production. The casts, on the other hand, bore no resemblance to each other. Goldeneye starred Pierce Bronson. "True Lies" starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Arnold.
5. Goldeneye's title song was written by U2's Bono and The Edge and performed by Tina Turner. Bono's lyrical inspiration for the song came from his honeymoon at Ian Fleming's Jamaican beach house which was ironically named Goldeneye.
6. On June 8, 1994 at London's Regent Hotel, Pierce Brosnan was officially introduced to the media as the new James Bond.  At the time Bronson looked more like a lumberjack than the suave James Bond.  The actor was scheduled to start shooting Robinson Crusoe the next day and had grown a full beard for the part.
7. Rumor alert:  Pierce Brosnan's "Goldeneye" contract allegedly prohibited him from wearing a tuxedo in any other movie.  Yet, just one year later, the dashing actor appeared in a tux in The Mirror Has Two Faces.  Moral of the story:  Never believe what you hear, or in this case, "wear."
8. Goldeneye would not be the only film appearance of Puerto Rico's enormous Arecibo radio telescope. It would also appear in the film Contact. The dish is so large that it took the film crew ten minutes to walk from the periphery of the dish to its center.
9. The real name of the 'Manticore' yacht seen in the Monte Carlo sequence in Goldeneye was 'Northern Cross.' The $15 Million boat got its 15 minutes of fame thanks to its owner, Finnish businessman Jorma Lillbacka of the power machine company Finn-Power.
10. Before shooting began on Goldeneye, Pierce Brosnan injured his hand while at home in Malibu. Keeping things in the family, Brosnan's 22 year old son Christopher was handed the job of being his father's hand double. See if you can tell the difference when 007 (aka, Christopher) pulls on the hand-break of the Aston Martin DB5.

Cast

Crew