Bond is back in the saddle again

DANIEL Craig fantasised about being a cowboy when he was a boy, and for longer than he ever dreamed of becoming James Bond.

The 43-year-old says a life-long love of pretending drew him into acting and he still gets star-struck.

In between Bond movies, he is starring in Jim Sheridan’s next movie, Dream House, which opens in October and on the set of which he fell in love with co-star, Rachel Weisz. He is in the bizarre new movie Cowboys and Aliens, produced by Steven Spielberg for which he was taught to ride a horse by John Wayne’s grandson, Brendan Wayne.

“The gag’s in the title. Although I imagine some people will come with misconceptions about what it’s all about, they’ll very quickly know that as crazy as the plot is about aliens coming down, we’re playing it for real,” he said.

Craig is a reluctant interviewee, who, despite a $20m pay cheque per movie, is not that willing to open up about much beyond the latest role he’s playing.

“When people ask me if I dreamed of playing James Bond as a kid, I say ‘no, I never did, but I always dreamed of playing a cowboy,’ so I just lucked out this year, really, and I threw myself in. I’ve got a certain connection to westerns, probably more through Sergio Leone than the John Ford westerns and the later political ones,” he says.

“We were very fortunate to have a group of wranglers who taught me how to ride. John Wayne’s grandson was one of our trainers, which was amazing. I’ve never been in a movie before that had the money and the time to actually get me on a horse everyday, so I loved it. Harrison bought my horse and his horse. If I had a piece of land, I would have bought my horse.”

Mention of his co-star, Harrison Ford, causes the dour and taciturn Craig to radiate. Indiana Jones made James Bond star-struck. “Steven Spielberg gives you this thrill about working in movies. When we were going through the casting process and Steven said there was a chance we might be able to get Harrison Ford in this movie — I was literally dancing at the other end of the phone,” he says. “I can only speak for myself, but I get that thrill, I get star-struck. When Harrison walked into the rehearsal room, I kinda went ‘oh my God, it’s him.’ You have to get over that and get on with the work, but it still gives me a thrill.

“When he came onboard, I wanted to give it all up to him. I’ve been a genuinely huge fan and it could have gone either way. I didn’t know what he was like to work with. I’d heard good things, but we could have butted heads. That would have been something we would all have had to deal with. He came in on day one and all he wanted was to get it right, and as an actor that was the easiest thing to understand. I could sort of push away my star-struckness and get on with the work. He’s very funny and generous, both as an actor and a human being. It was a joy.”

Another source of joy for Craig is his recent marriage to fellow actor Weisz. Both were in long-standing relationships when they met in Canada early last year on the set of Dream House. Weisz left her partner of nine years, the director Darren Aronoksky, with whom she has a son, and Craig broke up with producer Satsuki Mitchell. It was a whirlwind romance that culminated in a private wedding in upstate New York in June. This is as much as he’ll say about his newfound love.

“It’s a pretty good time, yes. I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying living. My family are close and my friends are close and it’s, you know, I feel good about life, yes,” he says.

Craig has a 19-year-old daughter from his first marriage to the Scottish singer and actress, Julie Louden. Weisz’s son Henry is five. What is ideal home life?

“The nicest homes are the ones I’ve always been into, homes that sort of seemed to have an open door to people and there’s a centre to that home, usually revolving around the kitchen, where there are children and there are family members and friends. If I was looking at an ideal home, that would be mine, warm and cozy,” he says.

Becoming Bond was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that he was nervous about taking on, succeeding Pierce Brosnan. Despite the hostility which his name elicited when he was cast, Craig describes being Bond as “a very, very high-class problem.”

“Before I accepted the role, I called up Pierce Brosnan and asked for his advice. The two of us went out for a few drinks, and despite whatever he might have been feeling personally, he said to ‘just go for it.’ I’ve been really lucky to land one of the best roles in movie history and I made a decision when that happened that if it was all I did for the rest of my life, I’d be very happy, because it’s a great thing to do. Over the last couple of years, MGM had a problem with making the next Bond movie and it’s given me some space to work on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Cowboys and Aliens. I couldn’t be luckier. They’re all very different pieces. I don’t think about how big they are or what they’re doing for my profile, I just think this is great work to be doing,” he says.

The next Bond movie, called Bond 23, is due to begin filming in the autumn and will be released next summer. “It’s been a great break, but I’m ready to go again. We have a wonderful script, written by John Logan, which I’m incredibly excited about, probably more so than when I first read Casino Royale. Sam Mendes is on board to direct and he’s working very hard to drag everything together,” he says.

“I never set out to do this. I was joking with Harrison Ford the other day, saying the reason I got into this business is because I like pretending and falling over. I had a toy pump-action Winchester when I was a kid, and my friends and I would go out to the sand dunes and pretend to shoot each other. That’s kind of why I wanted to become an actor and I’ve somehow managed to find a way into that, and, of course, I got more serious as I got older. I enjoy doing theatre and all these things, it’s just the path it’s taken me down and I don’t seem to be able to get off it at the moment.”