BROSNAN: WAITING IN THE WINGS FOR BOND ROLE

“It’s a rather stressful time,” said Pierce Brosnan. “I’ve no idea where I’m going to be living or what I’m going to be doing when I finish here.”

Brosnan, the blue-eyed Irish actor who has been starring in NBC’s “Remington Steele” for four seasons, is here making a movie, “The Fourth Protocol,” based on Frederick Forsyth’s novel.

He is hotly rumored to be James Bond when the latest 007 adventure, “The Living Daylights,” goes before the cameras in August.

He has been a favorite for the role but until the other day nobody knew whether “Remington Steele” would be picked up for another season. Much to his relief--for he says he had become jaded in the role--NBC dropped it. But, says Brosnan, there’s still a complication. MTM Enterprises, which made “Remington Steele,” has a contractual hold on him for 60 days from June 1. And the Bond movie is due to start in August.

“It’s all in the hands of attorneys now,” said Brosnan this week. “I just hope everything can be resolved amicably. ‘Cubby’ (Bond producer Albert (Cubby) Broccoli) is being very understanding.”

He feels he could bring something new to the long-running Bond series.

“I’ve asked myself again and again if I really want it,” he said. “Do I want to get locked into another character after all those years as ‘Remington Steele’? And the answer is yes. It seems a natural progression to go from Steele to James Bond.”

Brosnan, who landed on the cover of Newsweek last month in an article on elegance, has been trying for some time to make the leap from TV to the big screen.

Last year he starred in “Nomad” with Lesley-Anne Down but the movie failed to generate much heat. “I was so anxious to get away from my Remington Steele image that I think I went a little too far,” he said. “I grew a beard and wore my hair long and it didn’t work too well. The movie came and went very quickly.”

Meantime, he’s concentrating on his role in “The Fourth Protocol,” directed by John Mackenzie, who made the movie “The Long Good Friday” (Brosnan had a small part in that--”one line”). Novelist Forsyth and Michael Caine, who stars with Brosnan, are co-executive producers of the film.

Brosnan plays Major Petrofsky in the story--a Russian sent by Moscow to Great Britain to secretly assemble an atom bomb and explode it inside a U.S. Army base here.

“It’s a terrific part,” he said, “and it’s going well. John really knows how to move a film along.”

Right now he ought to be feeling rather pleased with himself.

“I would be,” he said, “if I just knew what was going to happen next.”

SWISS SOJOURN: Producer Martin Poll is here preparing for an August start for his movie “The Haunted Summer,” which John Huston--fresh from his critically acclaimed “Prizzi’s Honor”--will direct in Europe.

Based on a book by Anne Edwards and directed by Lewis John Carlino, the story takes place during the summer of 1816 when Byron and Shelley spent four months together in Switzerland. It was during this time that, on a stormy night, Mary Shelley dreamed up the story of “Frankenstein” and came down next morning and read it to the others.

“Both John and I think it will make an unusual and fascinating movie,” says Poll.

STAY AWAY: Advice from Sir Laurence Olivier in a new book just published here, “Laurence Olivier On Acting”:

“Work on a building site rather than go to a ‘method’ studio.”