After the long period between James Bond films "Licence to Kill" (1989) and "GoldenEye" (1995), the producers brought in Dench to take over as the role of M, James Bond's boss. The character was reportedly modeled on Dame Stella Rimington, the real-life head of MI5 between 1992 and 1996; Dench became the first woman to portray M, succeeding Robert Brown. The seventeenth spy film in the series and the first to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 officer, "GoldenEye" marked the first "Bond" film made after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which provided the plot's back story. The film earned a worldwide gross of US$350.7 million, with critics viewing the film as a modernisation of the series.