Playing James Bond isn’t always about wearing a tuxedo or a dashing leather jacket.
Take Daniel Craig, the controversial pick as the sixth man to play Agent 007. Perhaps his most memorable moment in the new “Casino Royale,” opening today, finds him wearing nothing at all. Stripped naked and tied to a chair with its seat cut out, Bond is ruthlessly tortured by an evil mastermind.
“It really was no big deal, luv,” Craig says, over breakfast at a New York hotel. “My family has seen me do much worse on the big screen.
“I stripped naked and, before I did the scene, I sat in the corner with my iPod, listening to the Clash and the Foo Fighters,” the British actor says. “Then I sat in the chair to be tortured. It was actually one of the simplest scenes in the movie to shoot, because all I had to do was scream out in pain.”
OK, the nudity did bother him a bit.
“Our producer, Barbara Broccoli, was on the set that day,” he recalls with a laugh. “She was on the set all day. I kept saying, ‘Don’t you have something to do at the office?”‘ Everyone is curious about the new James Bond, it seems, even the woman who hired him.
He’s a 38-year-old Englishman, born in Cheshire and trained on the British stage. And though early critics dismissed him as too blond, too bland or too not Brosnan to be Bond, he looks every inch the part at the moment, clad in a gray Brioni suit and starched white shirt, with his light-blue eyes gleaming.
And he’s no novice. Craig made his screen debut in “The Power of One” (1992), and his subsequent credits include “Elizabeth” (1998), “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” (2001) and “Road to Perdition” (2002), in which he played the psycho son of Paul Newman’s character. He also played Ted Hughes to
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Sylvia Plath in “Sylvia” (2003) and a key member of the commando revenge squad in Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” (2005).
All the same, he has been called the least-known and most controversial Bond ever – and, now that “Casino Royale” is finished, some critics are also calling him the best Bond ever.
“It’s even confusing to me,” Craig admits with a laugh. “I heard all the rumors about myself, but I just stuck my head down and did a job.”
Not that it’s an easy job to follow in the footsteps of Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and, most recently, Pierce Brosnan, a popular Bond whose abrupt ouster from the role alienated Brosnan and also many fans of the series.
“I watched every Bond film four times,” Craig says, “but then I let it all go flying right out of my head. Why make this movie unless you really want to do something different with the role? That would be the biggest waste of time in the world. I think it’s time to take Bond into the next century.”
“Something different” is exactly what he and director Martin Campbell deliver in “Casino Royale.” Judi Dench is back as M and there are the usual sensational stunts, as Bond jumps off a crane into the ocean, survives a terrifying car crash and veers across airport runways in a bomb-carrying fuel truck. And there are beautiful babes, this time out played by Eva Green and Ivana Milicevic.
But this is a darker, grittier vision of Bond. Craig plays a young Bond who has only recently received his “OO” certification and its license to kill. He’s raw and untried and makes his share of mistakes in battling to save the world from the villainous Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen).
This is, in short, a whole new Bond in many different ways, and it’s not without risk. Craig admits that he didn’t exactly jump at the chance to play 007.
“I sat down and made a pro- and-con list,” he says. “It’s what you do with a situation like this. Although not that many situations like this come along in life.”
The notoriously private actor knew that playing Bond would change his life forever.
“My life has always been as private as I can make it,” he says. “Now I will lose some of that privacy, but I must take it.” Among the positives he cites, first and foremost, is the chance to play one of the most iconic figures in the history of film.
“It’s a great character,” Craig says. “Sean Connery defined it. Every culture has a lone hero like this, the one person who knows who the bad guy is and goes and gets them. In a confusing world, that’s what great escapism is all about.”
Of all the attention, he admits “it’s intrusive. I’ll ride it out.” That’s what comes with being Bond, James Bond – a line that has been spoken into mirrors by untold numbers of fans and wannabes, but not by Craig.
“Never, never, never,” he insists. “I didn’t want to make it overly important.”