The record-breaking movie Daniel Craig only made for the money: “That does not turn me on”
If he continues on his current trajectory, then Daniel Craig stands a good chance of emulating, if not surpassing, Sean Connery for enjoying the best post-James Bond career of any actor to play 007.
George Lazenby isn’t part of that conversation because he accomplished fuck all in the grand scheme of things, while Roger Moore spent the rest of his professional life coasting on his raised eyebrow. Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton have done some great work, but Bond remains their pinnacle, stardom-wise.
Craig, meanwhile, has notched three Golden Globe nominations for Rian Johnson’s first two Knives Out films and Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, and the security that comes with making so much money as cinema’s most famous secret agent is that he’s free to take as many risks as he wants.
Admittedly, he’s only appeared in two movies in the last decade that didn’t involve Bond, Benoit Blanc, or William Lee, but the signs are promising nonetheless. He may never match Connery, who remained a highly-paid and in-demand star until his retirement, but he’s got all the tools to make a decent fist of it.
Obviously, that wasn’t the case before he’d been hired to get suited and booted to save the world while looking dapper in a tux, with Craig not putting himself on the map until 2004’s Layer Cake. He’d gained notice on television for Our Friends in the North and impressed in Road to Perdition, but his first major leading role in a feature was what really got the ball rolling.
The same can’t be said of when he first dipped his toes into blockbuster waters three years previously, playing Alex West in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. The Angelina Jolie vehicle shattered records to become the highest-grossing video game adaptation ever made and the top-earning action flick with a woman taking top billing at the time, but making history wasn’t a blip on Craig’s professional radar.
When Phase 9 asked the actor what motivated him to take the role of an adventurer and ally of Jolie’s title character, he was nothing if not honest: “Money!” That hit the nail on the head, but he did at least offer a bit more of an explanation, not that the excitement was seeping from every pore.
“I also like going to the cinema and having popcorn, nachos, hot dogs, the lot, while watching some big Hollywood movie,” Craig elaborated. “So it was an opportunity to be a part of that, and it was a good movie for what it was, but that kind of film does not turn me on.”
With the benefit of even more hindsight, he’d subsequently call Tomb Raider the “worst mistake” of his career, so let’s hope he was fairly compensated for it.
