Pierce Brosnan spoke to a criminologist at the Los Angeles Police Department while preparing to play a hitman in a new movie.

The actor made the decision because he didn't want to visit a prison to research his part in The Matador.

"I didn't want to go to a prison and hang out with a psychopath," eecho.ie quotes him as saying. "I gave them [criminologist] the script and said: 'Try to distil the essence of who this man might be, his psychopathic tendencies.'

"So I approached it from that side, and then I approached it from a visual side."