007 movie sets are always well guarded, but The Sun has managed to penetrate the baddies’ lair in South America during the making of the new film, Quantum Of Solace.

I am the only British journalist watching as DANIEL CRAIG runs, leaps and shoots — bulging biceps pumping — in sweltering temperatures at a height which induces altitude sickness in others.

Yet the powerfully built actor hardly breaks sweat during the punishing action sequence.

And the good news is that we can expect 40-year-old Daniel to continue as the world’s most famous spy for many years to come.

He tells The Sun: “Until my joints go I will keep going as Bond. I have no intention of giving up just yet.”

There had been speculation that Daniel might only complete his current three-movie deal and he had said: “It’s important that we make the best movies possible, so I can hopefully sit back in semi-retirement at some point and look back and think they were wonderful movies.”

But it is clear that after 2006’s Casino Royale became the highest grossing Bond ever — taking Ј325m globally — the film company would not want to let him go.

Producer Barbara Broccoli, whose EON production company make the Bond films, clung on to Daniel for dear life when the words “semi-retirement” passed his lips.

Being Bond seems to agree with Daniel. He is a totally different man from the previously serious and occasionally grumpy actor.

During our interview he frequently laughs and jokes with Barbara.

When asked about nude scenes in Quantum Of Solace, she cuts in: “I’m trying to get him to take his clothes off every day.”

And Daniel retorts: “It’s not helped by her leaking to the Press every day, ‘He might do, he might do’.”

Then he confirms: “There is a little nudity. It might not be full.”

Two of the biggest rumours to have emerged during the making of Quantum Of Solace are that both Bond and Daniel are going to get hitched.

But he bats off both rumours with surprising good humour.

Co-star GEMMA ARTERTON has admitted her character Agent Fields had been in a honeymoon suite with Bond.

And on suggestions he has popped the question to long-term girlfriend SATSUKI MITCHELL, he replies: “It’s a very important moment in a person’s life. I wouldn’t make an official announcement because I am not a member of the Royal Family.”

The interview takes place under the large glass dome of the European Southern Observatory’s ultra-modern residence for astronomers at Paranal, in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

In the film the building will appear as an eco-hotel in Bolivia from where Bond’s new nemesis, Dominic Greene, is hatching a plot to take control of water resources.

Greene’s company, Greene Planet, pretends to be environmentally friendly, though the main plot, which continues on from Casino Royale, is about revenge rather than the environment.

Daniel explains: “At the end of Casino Royale the love of Bond’s life has been taken from him. But Vesper Lynd had also been forced to betray him and she has ripped him apart. That’s where he’s at. There is a sense of vengeance. He’s out to get them.”

Bond wants revenge on the secret organisation which forced Vesper to betray him and that leads him to Greene, played by French actor MATHIEU AMALRIC.

Daniel says: “Mathieu has been fantastic. He’s very evil.”

Quantum Of Solace promises to be even more action-packed than ever, with a speedboat chase and a sky-diving stunt.

Daniel says: “We are going from stunt sequence to stunt sequence. We did a body flight thing where you are free-falling in a wind tunnel. That was tough.

“I did a two-day fight sequence which we had been rehearsing for two months. That was physically very hard — getting hit, basically.

“We are going to Siena in Italy next week and we are going to be working at heights. The speedboat sequence was also very hard. Filming on water is always difficult.”

You have to admire anyone who can run about in such harsh conditions as the Paranal Observatory.

I felt queasy just walking around at the peak and 16 people got medical assistance in just the one day I was there. Daniel says: “I have been running up and down here all day and it does feel hard at this altitude.

“Apparently you feel a ton better when you get back down to sea level, which is something I am looking forward to.”

The one thing Daniel is not keen to discuss is his fitness regime.

He has been criticised about not being tough enough to play 007 and says: “Bond used to do ten press-ups and smoke 50 cigarettes and drink a bottle of something and pop a pill. So it doesn’t sound very Bond-like to talk about fitness regimes.”

And while he clearly is the fittest of all the six Bond actors, Daniel doesn’t want to be remembered merely for his six-pack.

So one last quip from the new, all-smiling Daniel Craig: “At the end of this movie we film a scene where I’m fat — because I don’t want to be remembered as the physical Bond.”

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