Pierce Brosnan "would have loved to have known" his father.
The 63-year-old star is a father to five children – Charlotte, who passed away from ovarian cancer in 2013 aged 42, Chris, 44, and Sean, 33, with his former wife Cassandra Harris, as well as Dylan, 20, and Paris, 16, with his spouse Keely Shaye Smith – but says he couldn’t take tips on fatherhood from anyone because he grew up without a father.
He said: "I know what it’s like to bring up sons. It can be a very arduous road … My fatherly instincts are purely my own. They relate back to no one, because there was no one."
The former James Bond actor’s father, Thomas, left the family when Pierce was still a baby, and forced his mother to move to London in search for work whilst Pierce stayed with relatives.
According to the star, he did meet his father once when he was 31, whilst filming for his hit TV series ‘Remington Steele’, and said he would have liked to get to know him better.
Recalling the meeting, Pierce said: "I had a Sunday afternoon with him … [we shared] a story about this and that, had a few pints of Guinness, and we said goodbye. I would have loved to have known him. He was a good whistler and he had a good walk … That’s as much as I know about him."
Meanwhile, the ‘Mamma Mia!’ actor says he doesn’t need a lavish home in order to enjoy his life, and is happiest when he’s settled down with "a great bottle of wine".
He told the April issue of Esquire magazine: "You don’t need a big home. You need a good table to sit at, a good bed to sleep in, a view, and a great bottle of wine."