Daniel Craig

Double-o heaven! Current James Bond actor Daniel Craig took the opportunity in an interview in New York to explain that he still loves being 007. In a special 90-minute interview given on the evening of Friday, 7th October, at the New Yorker Festival at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Craig (his hair still bleached a striking blond for his latest film role in the comedy thriller Logan Lucky) was quizzed in quite some detail about his acting career and his other interests, including his views on the state of the movie industry and his attitude to some of the developments in contemporary politics.

At one stage in the interview, which was conducted live by New Yorker magazine scribe Nicholas Schmidle, the conversation turned to the hot topic of James Bond and, perhaps inevitably, to the wave of rumours that have swirled around Craig’s status as 007 over the last year. Craig said he knew that the question would come up about his future as Bond, and he quipped that his publicist had been ‘inundated’ with inquiries from the media about whether he would make an announcement about this that very evening.

He explained, however, that: ‘There’s no conversation going on, and genuinely because everybody’s just a bit tired. Barbara’s making another movie. I’m doing Othello. Barbara Broccoli is producing that’. Craig revealed that he had just spent the past week reading through the play in preparation for rehearsals, which commence on Monday, 10th October.

Referring to his comments made in an interview with Time Out magazine in 2015, very shortly after he had completed work on the 24th 007 movie SPECTRE, he repeated his previous explanation about the context of the interview and the tiredness he had felt at the time: ‘When asked 20 feet from the end of a marathon, will you do another marathon? The answer is simple: no, I won’t. But the things I get to do on a Bond movie and the type of work it is, there’s no other job like it. If I were to stop doing it – just say – I’d miss it terribly. It’s one of the most thrilling things as an actor you can do’.

Staying on the topic of Bond, Daniel also commented further to the interviewer that: ‘I love this job. I get a massive kick out of it. And, if I can keep getting a kick out of it, I will. I’ve got the best job in the world doing Bond’. At another point in the interview, reflecting on his gritty interpretation of the character of James Bond over the course of his four films, Craig explained: ‘I like that broken part of him. That doing a job like that has a serious effect on your psyche. That’s fun’.

JBIFC’s verdict

All in all, although Daniel has attempted to explain the context of his Time Out interview a number of times before to the media (comments which many in the press mischievously claimed meant that he had finished with Bond), his latest words on the topic constitute another determined and welcome effort to torpedo all the rumour-mongers. In so far as he can do so (much, of course, clearly still depends on the script, director and complex financial negotiations all being to his satisfaction), Craig has once again reminded people that the role remains very much his own, and he has not ruled himself out of Bond 25.

As far as we are concerned, that is very encouraging news indeed.

othello-publicity-still

Recent publicity still for the forthcoming stage play ‘Othello’

 

 

 

 

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