The Brosnan BOYS

You already know Pierce: legendary Irish American actor a Bond. Possibly the most charming man alive. Now meet his model-musician-film-maker sons Dylan and Paris, two of the only people on earth capable of resisting his charm.

- ALEX PAPPADEMAS

A FEW YEARS AGO, some of Dylan Brosnan's closest friends showed up to his house in Malibu for his 21st birthday party, and there they met Dylan's father, who turned out to be Pierce Brosnan. Dylan had never mentioned it.

Dylan laughs. "I don't tell anybody that, under any circumstances," he says.

It's a hot but breezy Wednesday afternoon in that same Malibu property, which Dylan's parents-Pierce and his second wife, Keely Shaye Smith, who married in 2001-have owned for more than 20 years. Dylan is on a couch in the living room, looking out the window at a blue gradient of sky and sea, explaining what it was like to grow up in a place where everyone knew his father's face.

"I always thought he had a lot of friends, growing up," Dylan says, "because people would come up to him in the street, and he's like the nicest guy, so he talks to everyone for a really long time."

Dylan is 25, born in 1997. His early childhood coincided with the peak of Pierce's box office mojo-the years of 007 and Thomas Crown. Later he'd talk to his father about these experiences-Do you remember your friend, that guy who dressed funny and hung out by the movie theatre every day?-and only then would he learn that these enthusiastic friends on the street were actually strangers. Mostly fans and, in some cases, weirdos.

Pierce Brosnan walks into the living room. "I was just getting the dog," Brosnan says. "He popped away. Slipped out of my back pocket." He's wearing khaki  shorts and an old white T-shirt-a silver-haired dad with nothing on the agenda except this conversation.

When it's over he plans to pour a cocktail and watch the pelicans squabble on the shoreline. Next year he will turn 70. Time has softened his face, blunted its severity.