DANIEL Craig has been in James Bond’s suit for quite a while now.
Spectre, his most recent turn as the famous spy, is about to hit theatres in November. But Craig says he still feels the pressure.
“When I first started these movies I didn’t know any better — I was naive and didn’t worry about a great deal, I just got on with it,” he tells GQ Australia in its November issue.
“As they went on, the pressure built. People thought Casino would bomb, it was a massive success and they were like, ‘What are you going to do now?’ Quantum, OK, it was difficult and a huge amount of pressure, but then Skyfall, again, ‘what are you going to do now?’ Well, we got Sam (Mendes, director) on board and it suddenly became a bit easier ...”
Craig called on his friend Mendes for 2012’s Skyfall (the pair worked together on Road to Perdition a decade earlier) and they’ve teamed up again for the latest offering — hoping to mimic Skyfall’s success.
The film went on to become the highest-grossing British film of all time — raking in over a billion dollars from a $283m budget. And Craig admits he can’t even comprehend that figure.
“That’s brilliant, but then you go, ‘What the f*** is a billion dollars?’ I can’t conceive how many f***ing tickets sales that is, I could probably look it up, but I’m not going to, I’ve better things to do,” he says.
n the franchise’s 24th instalment, Craig admits his character is working through some issues.
“S*** happens, it’s a Bond movie, but he’s in a pretty good place,” he says.
“What we did with Skyfall, or what Sam successfully did with Skyfall, was, in spite of the fact we had quite a sad story with the demise of M (Judi Dench), the end of the movie was sort of a beginning — we reintroduced Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Q (Ben Whishaw) and we have ourselves a new M in Ralph Fiennes. We sort of swept the boards and started again.”
Whether Craig does go on remains the big question mark over Bond. And Craig says he’s unsure of his next move.
“That’s the question isn’t it — do you leave the party early or do you stay and get p***ed on the floor? It’s a big debate and at the moment I just don’t know,” he admits.
And given Kanye’s putting his hand up for almost anything these days, how does Craig feel about America’s potential future president taking the 007 badge?
“Is that the new one? F*** it, yeah, get him in now,” he says. “You know Roger Moore’s also 200-1? So too David Beckham. Whatever. On the list of my priorities this is not even near the bottom.”
