The outgoing 007 reflects on the pressures of donning the tuxedo, and the effects on his performances as the character of James Bond.
Daniel Craig has been discussing his performance as James Bond 007 across his tenure as the superspy, reflecting especially on how the pressures of Quantum Of Solace affected his ability to act naturally within the subsequent films.
The actor, who was speaking to Empire, compared the experience of playing Bond in Casino Royale, where negative fan and press perceptions of him gave him scope to pleasantly surprise everybody, to Quantum Of Solace. On that one, high expectations, combined with the struggles of a writer’s strike, affected his performance, as he saw it. Beware, some fruity language was included, some of which, we’ve replaced with the word ‘gherkin’.
“For a while, I mourned the actor that I was in Casino Royale because in Casino Royale I didn’t know any better. I just didn’t get all of the pressure. Then you do [the film] and you get some success, and you go ‘oh shit’. It’s a double-edged sword. If I made Casino Royale and it was a pile of shit and I walked away, we wouldn’t be having this conversation … but it was a hit, and then there was the pressure that came with the need to succeed.”
Craig went on to discuss how the following film, Quantum Of Solace, with all of its attendant problems, hurt his performance as an actor.
“We did Quantum of Solace, which was a bit of a shit show to say the least, and the full weight of it made me locked up. Thankfully, since then it’s just been about loosening up and trying to get back to that feeling of Casino Royale, which is just like, ‘come on, it’s James Bond, enjoy yourself. Let’s have a good time’. I mean, I’m still a moody gherkin.”
How did you feel about Craig’s performance in No Time To Die? Given some of the film’s iconoclastic events, you might wonder that Craig wasn’t feeling some pressure this time out too, but if he was, he’s certainly not telling. Not yet, at least…
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