Daniel Craig can relax. Playing James Bond has not ruined his career.
His secret is flexibility. Give the 43-year-old Craig a gun, a girl and a martini, and he’s a believable 007. Take them away, though, and he’s a surprisingly credible everyman.
The latter skills were called upon for his latest film, David Fincher’s ”The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” in which Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, a Swedish journalist caught up in the hunt for a serial killer. It’s his investigative skills, not his muscles, that are key to his success.
”I would happily use ‘everyman’ as a word describing Blomkvist, but he’s not ordinary,” Craig says, speaking by telephone from London. ”I saw him as a journalist who probably spent far too much time in front of the camera giving his opinion about things. At the beginning of the film, his ego is his downfall.”
”The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” based on Stieg Larsson’s international bestseller, is scheduled to open nationwide on Dec. 21. Rooney Mara plays Lisbeth Salander, the socially challenged but supremely effective computer hacker who becomes Blomkvist’s partner in his investigation.
”I liked Blomkvist because of his idealism, his honesty, his love of women, his belief in fighting injustice and then his relationship with Salander,” Craig says. ”He’s complex enough to be interesting, hopefully.”
Is Blomkvist the anti-James Bond?
”Maybe,” Craig says after a moment’s thought. ”There was no deliberate choice on my part to make him that way.
”He’s a man and very sure of himself as a man,” the actor continues. ”He’s not a guy who goes around beating his chest. He doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not.
”I enjoyed the idea that at some point he has to be rescued by a young woman,” Craig adds. ”I’m hoping audiences will forget the comparison (with Bond) by the time I’m hanging on the ceiling.”
Fincher had no doubts that Craig was the right actor to play Blomkvist, he says in a separate interview.
”I needed someone who was extremely masculine and also very self-effacing,” the director says. ”We meet Mikael at a time in his life when he has been kicked pretty badly in the stomach. He needed to be somebody who didn’t have an ounce of self-righteousness or defensiveness.
”Mikael is a post-Watergate journalist,” Fincher continues. ”He’s inspired by the idea of the little guy making a difference. While he’s serious about what he’s doing, he also made a huge blunder.”
As the film opens, Blomkvist is leaving a courtroom, having been successfully sued for slander. In need of money, he accepts an assignment to write the biography of a retired business magnate (Christopher Plummer). His real job, however, is to find out what happened to the magnate’s niece, who disappeared decades earlier.
Midway through his research Blomkvist teams up with Salander, and it’s their relationship that drives the story.
”I needed to have a girl fall in love with Blomkvist for a number of different reasons,” Fincher says. ”The most pressing was that he be a great listener, that he be very present, not a narcissistic, mind-being-elsewhere guy.
”Because I’d met Daniel socially, I knew he was charming and gracious,” he says. ”I also knew he was a formidable onscreen presence.”
Although Craig made his film debut in ”The Power of One’’ (1992), it took another decade for Fincher to notice him.
”When I saw ‘Road to Perdition’ (2002),” the director recalls, ”I asked, ‘Who the (devil) is that? I want to meet that guy!’ Shortly thereafter we did meet. We have a lot of mutual friends.”
”It’s taken him this long to employ me,” Craig gripes good-naturedly. ”What’s he been waiting for?”
That it took him so long to scale the A-list, the actor says, is probably attributable to a combination of factors.
”I didn’t grow up in the States, where one movie can make a whole heap of difference,” Craig says. ”In England you make small movies that don’t get a wide release. It became an accumulation of work more than anything.
”I did ‘Angels in America’ (1993) at the National Theatre,” he adds, ”so that may have helped. People remember you and, when they come to cast a movie, they get you in for it.
”Or maybe it’s because I just wouldn’t go away.”
Craig’s self-deprecating manner has endeared him to his friends, among whom Fincher counts himself.
”Daniel is extremely funny,” the director says. ”You don’t hear about it a lot because, I think, he’s shyer than he’d like people to know. But he’s charming, and he has a gregarious side.
”The greatest news about him is that fame has come to him at a point in time where he can appreciate it,” Fincher says. ”He’s not one of those people that you get the idea that he’s never opened a door for himself or bought his own drink.
”Daniel is not entitled or privileged,” he concludes. ”He’s very blue-collar about acting. He’s very much about, ‘Roll up your sleeves, get in and do the work.’”
Craig grew up in Liverpool as the son of a pubkeeper and an art teacher. They split up when he was 4, and he ended up living with his mother.
”I had a pretty unextraordinary upbringing in a very nice way,” he says. ”I was brought up by my mother, and she had a love of all the arts.
”The first acting I did in front of a crowd was probably a gang show on a cruise ship when I was about 8,” he continues. ”Gang shows are a way of keeping children occupied when they’re on holiday. They put on a show for the adults. I was terrified.”
Even so, he kept coming back for more.
”Because of my mother, I spent a lot of time in the theater around actors, designers and directors,” Craig recalls. ”As a teenager it felt the most natural thing to do. I didn’t have a clue what else I wanted to do, apart from stay in bed till noon and then go out all night.
”I was the worst student in the world,” he adds. ”I left school at 16. I can’t conjugate a verb. I don’t know what a verb is.”
To get him out of the house, Craig’s mother sent him to London for the summer to study at the National Youth Theatre.
”Then I came home and worked at every job I could to earn money,” he says. ”I left again at 17 and spent two years in London, just working and auditioning and trying to get jobs and not succeeding.”
Eventually Craig was accepted at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he studied for three years, finishing in 1991.
”When I left I promised myself that, if I ever waited tables again, I’d give up acting,” Craig says. ”It didn’t happen. I kept getting jobs and paying the rent.”
Sharp-eyed filmgoers may have spotted him in ”Elizabeth’’ (1998), as a priest who attempts to assassinate the queen, or ”Love Is the Devil’’ (1998), playing the lover of British painter Francis Bacon (Derek Jacobi).
Bigger roles began to come his way: He played the love interest in ”Lara Croft: Tomb Raider’’ (2001), opposite Angelina Jolie, and poet Ted Hughes, husband of Sylvia Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow), in ”Sylvia’’ (2003). He was a ruthless assassin in Steven Spielberg’s ”Munich’’ (2005).
Then came Bond. ”Casino Royale’’ (2006) was hailed as a reinvigoration of the storied franchise, and Craig was an international star overnight. He returned as 007 in ”Quantum of Solace’’ (2008), and has also starred in ”The Golden Compass’’ (2007) and ”Defiance’’ (2008). 2011 has been something of a career year for him: Besides ”The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” he already has been seen in ”Cowboys and Aliens’’ and ”Dream House,” and on Dec. 23 will be heard – but not seen – in Steven Spielberg’s first animated film, ”The Adventures of Tintin.”
”I play a pirate and a bad guy,” he says.
Craig is currently in the middle of filming his third Bond film, ”Skyfall,” which he calls ”as Bond-like as possible.”
”We’re not going for something deep and meaningful,” the actor says. ”It’s not a great character study. It’s going to start the way Bond films always start, and it’s going to finish the way they always finish, and everything in between.”
After that he may return as Blomkvist in ”The Girl Who Played with Fire’’ and ”The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.”
”He doesn’t have as big a part in the second book,” Craig says, ”so maybe it will be an easier gig.” (Nancy Mills is a Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based free-lance writer.)
