WITH a lead role in a Hollywood blockbuster actor Daniel Craig is on the road to superstardom.
But the woman who helped inspire him as he grew up in Wirral is not at all surprised.
"It was all he ever wanted to do," explains his mother Carol Blond. "And I was somehow always quite sure he'd make it.
"It wasn't just a mother thing, he was just so determined I knew it was the only thing he could do."
Daniel, 34, appears alongside heavyweights Tom Hanks and Paul Newman in the gangster flick Road To Perdition and some critics have tipped him for an Oscar.
Although he has done endless theatre work and last year appeared as a rival raider to Angelina's Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, Daniel is probably best remembered as Geordie in the mid-90s television drama Our Friends in the North.
Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Daniel Craig in the film Road to Perdition
Road To Perdition looks set to change all that but Carol, an art teacher at Croxteth Comprehensive, seems to be taking it all in her stride.
Now 58 and living with third husband Max Blond in Hoylake, Carol cultivated the young Daniel's interest in acting after she moved with him and sister Lia from Frodsham to Wirral following the break-up of her marriage to Daniel's former merchant seaman father, Tim.
Confessing to being a bit " stagestruck" herself, she took her son to plays at The Everyman and to meet the actors.
It caught on, Carol says: "He was always performing, I would catch him tap dancing in school outside the offices."
On a cruise to the Norweigan Fjords with grandparents Olwyn and Doris Williams and aged just eight, he devised and performed a show for all on board.
Three seasons acting with the National Youth Theatre ensured that by the time Daniel left Hilbre High School at 16 there was only one career for him. But it wasn't easy.
After applying to LAMDA, RADA, The Young Vic and the Guild Hall School of Music and Drama, he was finally accepted at his preferred choice, the Guild Hall, on his third attempt.
"He had a rough time of it down in London," his mother says of the time he spent waiting on tables to make ends meet.
Shakespeare and theatre work followed before his acting breakthrough in the Morgan Freeman movie The Power Of One and later TV's Our Friends In The North.
Daniel Craig as Guy Crouchback in the mini-series Sword of Honour
The Road To Perdition premiered in London but a rather less exciting prior engagement prevented Carol from witnessing her son's big moment.
"I was being OFSTEDed at school," she laughs, before adding: "I'm not really into those events though - all that glitterati thing. I'm not sure Daniel is either."
Despite the Oscar buzz The Road To Perdition, the second movie from American Beauty director Sam Mendes, has received mixed reviews.
Carol still hasn't seen it but is looking forward to judging for herself. "I know the reviews have been mixed but Daniel seems to have come out quite well on the whole," she says modestly.
"When a film is as big as that and has stars like that in it people are looking to criticise it."
Carol will be in London to see Daniel perform alongside Michael Gambon in A Number at the West End's Royal Court Theatre, something the theatre-lover is very much looking forward to.
"I am impressed that he's managed to be successful on the screen and on stage," she says.
"I always thought if he could make it in British theatre he would be secure for life."
As for Daniel himself, his continuing Hollywood success seems assured, he has been cast to play poet laureate Ted Hughes alongside Gwyneth Paltrow as his wife, writer Sylvia Plath.
He also has a film due out with Notting Hill director Richard Curtis, co-starring former Coronation Street actress Ann Reid.
Carol doesn't expect his turn in the spotlight to affect her privacyloving son too much though. She says: "He has quietly been doing very well for a long long time.
"And he has been able to enjoy life. Fortunately fame has come at a time when he is old and wise enough to handle it.
Daniel Craig with Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider
"He has turned down big money parts in the past to retain credibility."
So how does he explain appearing in the big budget Tomb Raider?
Carol laughs: "He had to do that didn't he for the profile."
Films like Tomb Raider, Road To Perdition and the Ted Hughes role mean Daniel who shares a home in London with girlfriend Heike Makatsch - a German actress, is edging onto the A-list, but Carol doesn't foresee a move to Bel Air immediately.
She says: "I don't think he'll ship out there just yet. He is excited about the work but, like the rest of the family, he is pretty non-hysterical about these things.
"I am just happy to see him doing well in his job and part of that job happens to be that he's famous."
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