Celebrities are just like us—especially, as it turns out, when it comes to misbehaving at Yellowstone.
America’s oldest national park has earned a reputation as a hotbed of tourist rulebreaking in recent years, with cell phone videos making the rounds on accounts like TouronsofYellowstone of visitors trying to take selfies with (and occasionally getting gored by) bison and picking up their calves, running after bears, and venturing onto the unstable terrain near scalding geysers. The latest person to get popped by the National Park Service: former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan, who faces a court appearance after violating a closure order by leaving a boardwalk to get a closer look at a hot spring in the northern section of the park.
According to federal court documents, on November 1, rangers cited a person with Brosnan’s name on charges of Foot Travel in a Thermal Area and Closure Violation at Mammoth Terraces. While the NPS issued the citation nearly two months ago, officials only filed it on December 26; Brosnan faces a mandatory court appearance on January 23.
Generally viewable on a 2.8-mile loop hike that follows boardwalks, Mammoth Terraces is a popular destination in the northeast corner of the park and is a popular place to cross-country ski and snowshoe in the winter. On Yellowstone’s site, the NPS notes that the hot springs in the area “change constantly,” sometimes to the extent that it’s visible over the course of a day.
While the park service has urged visitors to stay away from hot springs and other unstable thermal features in social media posts and signs, tourists still regularly break closures to get up close to the steaming geological wonders, earning tickets and even bans from the park. Some suffer even greater consequences: In recent years, a handful of visitors have sustained serious injuries or died after accidentally or purposely entering geothermal pools.
At least 22 people have passed away from burns received in Yellowstone’s springs and geysers, including Colin Nathaniel Scott, who the park service concluded dissolved after leaving the boardwalk in the park’s Norris Geyser Basin in search of a place to soak in 2015, and Il Hun Ro, whose foot an NPS employee found floating in Abyss Pool after the 70-year-old Los Angeles man apparently fell in.
According to The Messenger, which first reported the story, Brosnan was in the area to film the upcoming western Unholy Trinity with Samuel L. Jackson at the time of the incident.
From 2023
