It’s clearly a case of life imitating art. On the silver screen, Pierce Brosnan stars as James Bond, traveling the world foiling nefarious plots of traitors and terrorists. Between films, Brosnan travels the world preserving the environment and raising money for women’s health causes.

Brosnan’s devotion to women’s cancer research requires little explanation: His wife Cassandra died of ovarian cancer in 1991. She was only 39. Since then, Brosnan helped launch the annual Revlon Run/Walk for Women in 1993. The event has raised more than $20 million. And he’s currently the campaign chair of the Entertainment Industry Foundation, an umbrella group that helps fund more than 200 nonprofit organizations, including women’s health and environmental efforts.

Brosnan sees an obvious link between his passions for health and the environment. "I don’t think you can separate them," he says, "because the air we breathe and the food we eat sometimes can have disastrous effects on our beings. Having lost a wife to cancer and having very close friends battle the disease, you become informed of health issues and, consequently, the environment."

In a recent preservation effort, Brosnan worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to prevent the Mexican government and Mitsubishi from constructing a massive salt plant at Baja’s Laguna San Ignacio, the last undisturbed nursery for gray whales. In 1997, he spent four days camping at the lagoon, where friendly whales come up to the sides of boats and let people touch them.

Preserving the pristine location "was close to my heart," Brosnan says. "The migration of these great creatures would have been severely hampered if they had gone ahead with the salt mine."

So Brosnan helped NRDC by appearing at press briefings, giving media interviews and encouraging a boycott of Mitsubishi products. The result: In March, after five years of campaigning by NRDC, plans for the project were abandoned.

"Pierce is very committed, and he’s like a magnet for the media," says Joel Reynolds, a senior attorney for NRDC. "He is superb with interviews and made the time for us, to travel, meet, do press conferences. More than any single person he helped achieve the result."

Brosnan also appears in international magazine advertisements for the Forest Stewardship Council, which promotes responsible forestry, and public service announcements for Planet Ark, an Australian environmental group. He feels he has a duty to help. "It’s wonderful having success as an actor, but I think it has to be balanced with giving back to the community at large or just your backyard community," he says. "It’s wonderful making movies, but some of the issues that I’ve allied myself with have given me tenfold gratification."

Another victory for 007.