Pierce Brosnan Prepares to Leave His $100 Million Malibu Home

Pierce Brosnan said he and Keely Shaye Smith are ready to leave their $100 million Malibu compound after 26 years. The actor, 73, said the couple has been spared by wildfires more than once, and that it is time to move.

On September 11 he put the fear in plain words: fire, a fault line, a long drive into town, and a beautiful house that still has a mortgage. Wanting out is the easy half. Broad Beach already showed them, in 2020 and 2021, that a nine-figure ask can sit untouched.

They Already Tried to Sell It Once

Property records show the couple assembled the oceanfront land in 2000, buying one lot for $5.1 million and the next for $2.25 million, a combined $7.35 million. They razed a midcentury house on the pricier parcel and spent about a decade building a Thai-inspired estate they named Orchid House, with architects Ralph and Ross Anderson.

The design grew out of Brosnan’s time in Thailand shooting the 1997 Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. Keely later said they fell in love with the architecture, and that getting the green clay-tile roof to the right shade, the color of Thai temples, was a labor of love. After Die Another Day in 2002, Brosnan told her to go build the dream house. She did.

They tested the market long before this week’s remarks. Compass agent Chris Cortazzo listed the compound in September 2020 at $100 million, then the eighth-priciest home for sale in Los Angeles County. About a year later it came off the market with no offer and no price cut. In 2004 they had already advertised it as a rental at $120,000 a month.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The land: Two Broad Beach parcels bought in 2000 for $5.1 million and $2.25 million.
• The 2020 ask: $100 million through Chris Cortazzo of Compass, then pulled after about a year.
• The earlier rental: Listed in 2004 at $120,000 a month.
• The new comments: On September 11, Brosnan said it is time to move; he did not announce a fresh listing.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• A new listing: No public ask has been attached to this week’s remarks.
• A buyer: None surfaced at $100 million in 2020 and 2021.
• A price cut: They refused one last time; nothing says they will accept one now.

That silence is the part the fresh quotes do not solve. A house can be too dangerous to keep and still be too expensive for anyone else to take on.

Inside Orchid House on Broad Beach

The estate sits on 1.18 acres at 31118 and 31112 Broad Beach Road, with 117 feet of beach. The main house runs about 12,500 square feet. Across the main house and guesthouse there are five bedrooms, 14 bathrooms and seven fireplaces.

ORCHID HOUSE AT A GLANCE

Past carved teak gates, the grounds run to palm trees, tropical planting, travertine courtyards and wraparound lanais. The great room opens through walls of glass onto the deck. The kitchen has teak cabinetry, two stoves, two islands and quartz crystal counters.

The main suite is about 4,000 square feet, with two fireplaces, an art studio and a private deck over the water. Downstairs there is a screening room with stadium seating for up to 20, a bar, a wine cellar for about 200 bottles, a gym, a music room and a spa with a sauna, steam room and Japanese soaking tub. Outside, a saltwater pool with a waterfall sits near two glass-enclosed dining rooms. Keely once said those rooms exist so a dinner party’s napkins are not blowing around.

They raised sons Dylan and Paris in that house. For years it was the California base while Kauai became the other pole of the year. The building is a private resort. It is also a machine that has to be staffed, insured, watered and paid for whether anyone is in the movie theater or not.

A $1 Million Fire in the Garage

Wildfire is the fear Brosnan named this month. The first fire that got inside the house was smaller and closer. On February 11, 2015, at 9:48 p.m., flames started in the two-story garage on Broad Beach Road and ran up into a bedroom above it.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials put the damage at about $1 million. The garage and its contents were destroyed. Brosnan and his family were in the house and got out after a smoke detector went off. No one in the household was injured. He stood in the street while crews worked.

He later said he had just finished a week of meditation classes when he looked into the garage and saw the car cover in flames. Paintings were in there. So was a first edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses. So was his Aston Martin. In that second, he said, you think about trying to save the car, then you remember it is a car, take the blow, and give thanks you are alive.

They rebuilt. They stayed. The 2015 fire was an electrical-scale disaster in a beach garage, not a canyon firestorm, and it still ate a Bond car and a Joyce first edition in a few minutes. That is the memory sitting under the calmer sentence about being spared.

After the Palisades Fire Reached Malibu

The Palisades Fire started on January 7, 2025, at 10:30 a.m. It burned 23,448 acres in Los Angeles County before containment on January 31. Los Angeles County’s anniversary tally lists 6,837 structures destroyed and 12 dead, with 973 structures damaged.

PALISADES FIRE, COUNTY TALLY

• Start and end: January 7, 2025, to January 31, 2025.
• Ground burned: 23,448 acres.
• Buildings: 6,837 destroyed, 973 damaged.
• Deaths: 12 confirmed.

FROM JANUARY 2025

1. January 7, 2025: The Palisades Fire starts at 10:30 a.m. southeast of Palisades Drive.
2. January 7, 2025: The Eaton Fire starts at 6:18 p.m. and later burns 14,021 acres, destroys 9,414 structures and kills 19 people.
3. January 2025: Paris Hilton’s Malibu house burns; she said she watched it go on live television. Mel Gibson’s Malibu house is destroyed while he is in Texas. Jeff Bridges and his siblings lose a Malibu family house on Pacific Coast Highway.
4. January 31, 2025: Both fires reach containment. Orchid House is still standing.

Brosnan’s line about being spared is not a figure of speech. The same fire system that flattened houses a short drive away left his green roof intact. State maps still show the status of damaged Palisades structures, address by address, which is how close the luck sits to the loss.

We’ve been spared by the fires a few times now. But I think it’s time to move. Everything changes, everything falls apart.

Pierce Brosnan, actor, September 2026 interview

He added the other California threat in the next breath. “We live by this body of earth’s water on a fault in a ring of earthquakes. That creates a fear.”

Why Malibu Feels Empty to Them Now

Fire and shaking are the dramatic reasons. The quieter one is that the social map of Broad Beach has thinned while they stayed put. Brosnan, now 73, and Smith, 62, married on August 4, 2001, at Ballintubber Abbey in County Mayo, Ireland, and marked 25 years this August. The friends around the house did not all last that long.

WHAT HE SAID ABOUT STAYING

• Distance: He called the couple somewhat reclusive and said it is a long way into town.
• The circle: They still have a small group of friends in Malibu.
• The attrition: People get divorced, they die, they move on.
• The leftover fact: “And we’re still here.”

That last sentence does more work than the fire quotes. A 12,500-square-foot beach house is a poor cure for a smaller dinner table. The drive into town does not shrink because the spa has two tubs. After the Palisades Fire, some of the famous names on the same coast were not “still here” in the same houses. Hilton, Gibson and Bridges were clearing lots. The Brosnans were looking at a house that had made it, and deciding that making it was no longer the same as wanting to stay.

Paying the Mortgage on a Fault Line

Brosnan has been frank, in the same conversation, about the cost of the place he is now willing to leave. He talked about doldrums in the acting work, the beautiful house, the mortgage, and school fees. He described moments when the boat was not quite sinking, and might, if a job did not arrive soon.

There have been doldrums. I have this beautiful house in Malibu. I have to pay the mortgage. There are school fees. There are definite moments of, oh, this boat is not quite sinking, but it might if we don’t get a job soon.

Pierce Brosnan, actor, September 2026 interview

Asked whether that meant taking the occasional turkey, he said not many. You make peace with it, he said. You take the job because you need the money, then you show up on time and do good work.

That is a strange speech to attach to a house last offered at $100 million, until you remember the offer found no takers. A listing price is not cash. Carrying costs do not pause because the roof tiles match a temple in Thailand. The 2020 bid for a nine-figure sale was, among other things, a way to step off a very expensive treadmill. It failed. The treadmill is still there, on a fault, in a fire belt, a long way into town.

Hawaii Is Already the Family Home

They already live part of the year on Kauai. Brosnan has said the family home is now very much in the islands, and that Hawaii is like Ireland with the heat turned up. He has talked about Christmas with his wife at a small island retreat. In an earlier conversation he said Hawaii is her home and their home, and that she gives him room to go off and make movies.

Smith, a journalist and filmmaker, has deep ties there. She directed Poisoning Paradise, about agriculture on Kauai, and the couple has given money to island projects, including $100,000 in 2007 toward a playground. The gravitational pull is not a mystery. Malibu is the monument. Kauai is where he says the life actually sits.

He has even talked about a third place near Dublin. That is a wish, not a closing date. The concrete fact is simpler, and it has been true for years: they built a $100 million sanctuary on Broad Beach, could not sell it, watched fire take the neighbors, and are now saying the sanctuary is the thing they need to walk away from. Finding someone who will pay for that walk is a different job from deciding to take it.