Clive Simmons meets every bad boy’s wet dream, the deliciously dangerous Daniel Craig. “The question with James Bond is a fundamental question of ethics,” Daniel Craig says. “It’s, ‘Am I the good guy or a bad guy who works for the good side?’ Bond’s role, after all, is that of an assassin. But, you know, I have never played a role in which someone’s dark side shouldn’t be, or wasn’t, explored.” The first thing you notice about Daniel Craig is his looks: the blond hair, the toned body, and his blue eyes. Craig could have played ‘beefcake’ roles and had a successful career, but instead, he has forged a career playing dark or tormented characters in movies such as Layer Cake and Love is the Devil. More recently, he was chosen to play James Bond in a remake of Casino Royale, in which he redefined Bond as a dark character rather than a man playing with intricate gadgets and women with names like Pussy Galore. Raised in a small town in Cheshire, Craig’s parents divorced when he was five. His father, a merchant seaman, went off to manage “exotic bars” in the Caribbean, while his mother trod the boards with a prestigious theatre company in Liverpool. Craig started acting at the age of six in a school production of Oliver, but was “beguiled” by the cinema at an early age. “I got the bug in the cinema,” he says. “I just went and watched films like Quest For Fire and Blade Runner. I had no idea what was happening, but I knew then that I wanted to make movies. Seeing those guys’ faces get blown up on that huge screen, I thought ‘I want to do that.’ I always wanted to be an actor, I think, and I had the arrogance to believe I couldn’t be anything else.” He dropped out of school early, although not before singing in a rock band, Inner Voices, and studied at the Guildhall School of Art and Drama, where Joseph Fiennes and Ewan McGregor were fellow students. He was cast in the film, The Power of One, which he later termed “a piece of shit”, and drifted into television, starring in shows such as Drop the Dead Donkey, and another hugely successful series, Our Friends in the North, opposite Malcolm McDowell. His big break came when he starred in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, opposite Angelina Jolie, although it is not a film he is proud of. “I thought I’d got myself into something I didn’t understand,” he says. “Those films by their very nature stop you acting. I should never have said yes to it. That movie was so crap. I couldn’t get my head around what was going on.” But it did give his career a boost, and he was cast as a gangster in the film, Layer Cake. “What decided me on that was the script. What I liked about it was its intelligent through-line, and secondly – and selfishly I guess – I liked the moral aspect of the movie, which was that violence has consequences. “You know, I believe that this is an art form, and every piece of work you do is political, regardless of whether it’s a blockbuster or a smaller movie. It has a political message to put across, and the audience should understand that message.” More recently, he has worked alongside Nicole Kidman in The Invasion and The Golden Compass, although neither film worked in terms of box-office. In the case of The Invasion, there were rumours of ever-changing scripts and directors being sacked. Regarding The Golden Compass, press seemed to focus not on the film, but whether its author, Phillip Pullman, had penned an “anti-religious” work. “He’s a very subversive human being,” Craig says, “and that’s very appealing. But it’s the debate the books have raised which I find interesting. It’s true that the books have been accused of being anti-religious, but I think it’s quite the opposite, really. They believe in faith and all the original Christian ideas of love and charity. And if a film raises that kind of debate, then that’s a good thing.” When he was originally approached to be James Bond, Craig was not enamoured of the idea; in fact, he steadfastly resisted it. “Barbara Broccoli wanted to do a new adaptation of Casino Royale, and when I got the call, it was left-field. I knew that she was trying to take Bond in a new and different direction, but I turned it down. At the time there wasn’t a script, and I can’t say, ‘Yes’ without a script. “But then Paul Haggis sprinkled his magic dust on it and when I read the script, I broke into a sweat. I worried about being typecast, but then Pierce Brosnan said, ‘Go for it. It’s a ride’ so I decided to do it.” Like Casino Royale, Craig’s new Bond film, Quantum of Solace, has a leaner, meaner feel than its predecessors. “It would be wrong to make a movie like this without using all the technology at our disposal, but it was important for us not to use those gadgets which were more from the late 60s period of spy and political thrillers. These films are heightened realities. They’re not Bond. This is the world of Bond.” Written by Clive Simmons Wednesday, 03 December 2008 16:28

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