Pierce Brosnan's Birthday Message to Sean Connery
- After losing his first wife, Cassandra, and stepdaughter, Charlotte, to ovarian cancer, Pierce Brosnan has voiced how important important “bonds” are between friends.
- Brosnan wished fellow James Bond, Sean Connery, a happy 90th birthday in a heartwarming Instagram post.
- After losing Cassandra, Brosnan turned to painting to deal with his emotions embracing creative outlets during and after cancer treatment is a common theme for people impacted by the disease.
On Instagram, Brosnan, 67, sang Connery’s praises while wising him yet another trip around the sun. According to the post, Brosnan has been watching Connery on the big screen since he was 11-years-old, and says he’s been one of his biggest acting inspirations throughout his career.
Read MoreFor Brosnan, close friends and support systems can be even more special, seeing as he’s experienced a fair share of hardships after losing loved ones to cancer. In 1991, Brosnan lost his first wife, Cassandra, to ovarian cancer, and just over a decade later his stepdaughter Charlotte (Cassandra’s daughter), also passed away from the same disease in 2017. Both women were in their early 40s when they passed, and likely carried a genetic predisposition to the disease (Cassandra's mother also passed away from it).
Finding Inspiration During & After Cancer
Whether you’ve experienced cancer personally, or a family member who has been impacted by the disease, turning to creative outlets can be a way to cope with mixed emotions and serve as a perfect distraction. Brosnan has said himself that he started painting as a way to cope with losing his wife from ovarian cancer, and in conversations with SurvivorNet, cancer survivors have share their own experiences.
Marianne Cuozzo has been painting her whole life, but after going through three separate cancer battles, she says she has a whole new appreciation for the canvas. Marianne was first diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 1994 at 28-years-old. In 1997 she had a recurrence, and in 2014 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Initially, when she painted through her emotions, it showed how dark she was feeling during this vulnerable time. Now, Cuozzo says she’s able to look at her heart and see how she evolved throughout treatment and has grown stronger from it.
“I’d go in the studio, and I had these huge pieces of charcoal, and I would do these really angry charcoal drawings, and I’d roll them up and stuff them under the couch,” Marianne tells SurvivorNet. “No one was meant to see them because it was just for me and, my cathartic getting out my anger…My artwork is very reflective of my cancer journey. When you’re diagnosed be proactive, and know your body, and know that, I guess, 100% that you’re not alone. There’s courage in you that you never knew you had.”
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