Daniel Craig’s radical change

He spent almost 15 years playing his version of James Bond, a tough, strong man, very sure of himself, who almost never smiled, and who seemed unmoved until he ran into a woman. He did it with such precision since he debuted as the successor to Pierce Brosnan, Roger Moore and Sean Connery with the hugely successful Casino Royale in 2006, that we just assumed that was what Daniel Craig was like.

The British actor who two years earlier had risen to fame with Layer Cake Matthew Vaughn’s first blockbuster, earning the interest of Steven Spielberg, who immediately called him up for Munich became an example of masculinity. Every two or three years he reminded us of that image, in Quantum of Solace (2008), Heavy rain (2012), Spectre (2015) y No time to die (2021), in which his character passed away, freeing him from carrying the 007 torch and opening the way for the Broccoli brothers, owners of the franchise, to find a successor (or successor), something that has not been done before. happened until now.

His performance in the deeply introspective film ‘Queer’ has captivated critics

And although throughout all these years Craig allowed himself to show many other facets, in films like Daggers in the back , Millennium: the men who did not love women , Cowboys & Aliens o Endurance in none of them did he try to break his image. Even in his personal life, who was married to Fiona Loudon for two years, with whom he had a daughter, he aroused the envy of many when he conquered Rachel Weisz, with whom he began dating at the end of 2010, marrying her six months later. Today they are still happy, raising a 6-year-old daughter, whose name they never made public.

Perhaps all this explains why, after appearing in Daggers in the back: the mystery of Glass Onion In 2022, the actor who is now 56 years old disappeared from the billboards for a time to reappear with a role that promises to forever change his career and also how the audience sees him. His performance in Luca Guadagnino’s new film, Queer in which he plays William Lee, the alter ego of the writer William S. Burroughs, shows him as a man dominated by the passions generated by alcohol, drugs and also men. His work has been so convincing that after receiving nominations for the Golden Globe and the Critics Choice, in which he had already been a candidate twice, he has enormous possibilities of obtaining an Oscar nomination, with which he would break years of being ignored by the voters of the Hollywood Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Queer focuses on the writer’s complex relationship with former naval officer Eugene Allerton, played by the rising 31-year-old Drew Starkey. There are numerous sex scenes, including many that are in line with what Guadagnino has done in other previous films such as Call Me By Your Name , to the bones and the recent Rivals approach the limits of what is possible to show in a movie theater. And although such intense moments may surprise those who have known him as Bond, for Craig it is simply a return to what he did in his native England before Hollywood discovered him, when he participated in risky films like love is the devil in which in 1998 he played the lover of a Francis Bacon by Derek Jacobi or The Mother from 2003, in which he lived a passionate parallel romance with a mother and her daughter.

In an interview with The New York Times He explained simply: “Sex forces you to surrender. It is in those moments that true connection occurs. Obviously there is a part that is lust, total and dirty, but the story is also about someone looking for love in times when it was something very complicated,” he told journalist Kyle Buchanan.

During the promotion of Queer Daniel has shown himself with long hair and a much more relaxed attitude than when he had to go out to promote his Bond films. In a conversation with the writer after one of the first screenings of the film, the actor acknowledged that at that time all the attention his character generated made him so nervous that he seemed tense in interviews and at any public event. The change in attitude did not go unnoticed. In July, when he participated in a series of advertisements for the Loewe brand, in which he posed in colorful sweaters, the New York Times declared that Craig had finished killing James Bond.