MADONNA
PARIS – Irish actor Pierce Brosnan, star of Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer” and a former James Bond incarnation, was among some 2,700 fans cheering US pop icon Madonna at her Paris concert Thursday.
“We know her, my wife wanted to come so we bought tickets,” Brosnan told AFP.
Brosnan was in Paris for “Love Punch,” a film with Emma Thompson being shot in the French capital.
Madonna wrote and performed the title song for the 2002 Bond film “Die Another Day” in which Brosnan played the title role, with Halle Berry co-starring.
The singer was expected to be streaming her concert on YouTube live from Paris’s Olympia hall, which seats 2,700 people.
France’s far-right National Front said earlier this month it would sue Madonna over a video at an earlier concert in Paris showing party leader Marine Le Pen with a swastika on her forehead.
The video, which served as a backdrop for Madonna’s performance of the song “Nobody Knows Me,” flashed a picture of Le Pen’s forehead superimposed with a swastika, followed by an image resembling Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
There was an audible gasp from the audience at the Stade de France on July 14 when the image of Le Pen appeared briefly on a giant screen in the video clip that also showed Madonna’s face merging with a number of public figures, including Pope Benedict XVI and toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.