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“James Bond walks into a room wearing a sling” sounds like the beginning of a joke.
Except for our interview, James Bond really does walk into the room with his right arm in a sling. The international spy may be invincible, but the guy playing him—Daniel Craig—isn’t. “I had to have shoulder reconstruction,” Craig explains. “I think it’s an old injury, but two Bond movies over the past three years have not helped.”
Bond hasn’t lost a step in the new film “Quantum of Solace,” a sequel of sorts that takes place right after the end of “Casino Royale.” In “Quantum,” 007 is out for revenge and teams up with a mysterious Bolivian babe (Olga Kurylenko) while pursuing a businessman (Mathieu Almaric) whose environment-friendly organization may have ulterior motives.
Craig told Metromix about why Bond never walks around in a sling, the difficulty of getting in shape for the role and how 007 would fare against Jason Bourne.
Nice sling. Who’d you have to kill on your way here?
Nobody yet ...
How come we never see Bond walking around in a sling?
Because I think it would be fairly dull, wouldn’t it? [Maybe] if he was walking around with plaster on his foot…
If you read the books, it’s funny because he always goes off on these missions and then M gives him a holiday. But invariably he’ll be on holiday and something else will happen. I’m kind of waiting for the holiday at the moment.
Doesn’t Bond ever wear something casual? He wears suits even when he knows he’ll be in action.
I don’t think he ever knows he’s going to do action things. I think he dresses for the day, and he dresses as perfectly as he can, and if something happens, it happens. He doesn’t think, “Well, I won’t wear that today. I might get shot.” I don’t think that actually goes through his head.
How much of a pain is it to get in shape for the role?
It’s a pain in the ass, I can’t tell you. There’s two things. One is the narcissism attached to it. I think he likes being fit. But the other one is I want to do as many of the stunts as I can, and the only way I can do that is to keep myself as fit as I possibly can. Because if I do get an injury I’ll recover quicker. It sounds like I really think about it all the time, but I don’t. I just think: OK, go to the gym, rehearse, work. Go to the gym, rehearse, work.
What is James Bond fighting for, as the world changes?
Let’s boil it down to what it is. There’s someone somewhere out there, the bad guys, and I go out and get them. It’s no more or less than that. I’ve never tried to do anything with the part to suggest that it should be anything other than that.
Bond is loyal to the queen let’s say, but actually he’s a civil servant so he’s loyal to nobody really. In fact the only people’s he’s loyal to are the people because those are the people he’s protecting. And there’s something I think that’s quite good about that.
Do you miss the privacy you had before you became Bond?
Of course I do, yeah. What I do know is how much more important to me [it is] than it ever was. I had very little press interest in me back then [around the time of “Layer Cake”]. Maybe something would happen and my name would appear in the paper and suddenly I’d get a paparazzi outside my house for some reason. I didn’t enjoy it then. I’ve always retained my privacy, but now I protect it even more. My friends and my family, they need to be looked after.
Other globetrotters like Jason Bourne try to achieve Bond-like stunts. If Bond and Bourne were in a race around the world …
James Bond would win. That’s the answer. No need to go into it. He would win. [Laughs]
Even in a sling?
And I’ll have one arm tied behind my back.
