Daniel Craig Reveals He Never Thought He Would Land Role of James Bond

The James Bond “No Time to Die” Premiere was one of the biggest post-pandemic movie premiers to date. If not, the highest-profile movie premiere post-pandemic. Particularly when you take into account that it had a royal presence. The film marked the last time that Daniel Craig will give life to the iconic 007.

Craig took some time to reminisce about his early days in the role through a recent interview with The New York Times. Including, when he actually went in for an audition. At the time he never dreamed he would land the role! 

These days we know Daniel Craig as a successful actor. Say what you may about his performances, but the Bond character has made him into a well-known celebrity. When auditioning for the role though he wasn’t as renowned. Even he doubted that he would be able to fill the shoes of Pierce Brosnan, let alone some of the other great actors that played the role before him. He mentioned of his mindset going into the audition, 

“I was just amongst the mix — someone to dismiss,” while then adding that his highest hope was to land a bad guy role saying, “Here you go, have a baddie.”

A lot of high-profile celebrities love to talk about how they always knew they were going to make it big, and they had ambitious dreams. That really wasn’t the case for Craig.

He set for himself much more modest goals when he got into acting. He mentions in the interview that he wanted acting to be able to help him pay the bills. For him getting into acting which has been his job since the early 90s was a way to do something other than wait tables for a living! After telling this part of his story he mentioned, 

“Believe me, I’m completely a mere mortal,”  

As we mentioned Craig faced quite the opposition when he first took on the role of James Bond. One of the biggest criticisms that he faced was that he was nowhere near as good-looking and classy as Pierce Brosnan.

Let’s be real now, there aren’t many people out there that can top the former 007 in those departments. Craig though explains that he’s comfortable with his take on the character saying, 

“There’s a consistency which I wanted to put into it,” he then went on to add “Maybe I’ll be remembered as the Grumpy Bond. I don’t know. That’s just my Bond and I have to face up to it, that has been my Bond. But I’m quite satisfied with that.”

James Bond is one of those characters that will potentially live on forever and ever in cinema. With Craig calling it quits after 5 movies even though no new movie is in production there’s already speculation on who could be the new Bond. Craig was clear that he was not on board with Bond getting a major makeover. 

He specifically stated that he would not like Bond to be made into a woman or have a black actor take on the role. Something that Hollywood loves to do these days.

Craig certainly took some heat for the comments, but he explained that what moviemakers should be doing is creating great roles for women and minority actors instead of trying to force them into roles that traditionally have been different. We’ll have to wait and see if he’s granted the wish!