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Lu
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Post by Lu »

Jana66 wrote:
Germangirl wrote: Daniel: (On getting the role of James Bond) When I heard that I got the part, the first thing I did was getting really drunk. And when I talk about beer, I talk about Guinness! Other than that, you can make me happy with red wine and a good Vodka Martini.
I always think, I do know al lot (because I always try to see and read and remember everything about Daniel)...but I must lost this one. Daniel likes red wine! Good, to know that...I share this kind of preferece with Daniel :D :D :D .
I can't drink red wine unfortunately! I have sulfite allergies and it makes me get hyper and then nauseous and then I pass out :lol:

I can totally see Daniel with the guinness though. he's so manly. :D
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Daskedusken
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Post by Daskedusken »

Daniel Craig`s daughter is proud of her dad`s performance as 007

Notoriously private Daniel Craig has revealed his daughter is proud of his new role as James Bond - reports the Daily Record.

While many 007 fans have been outrageously spiteful at the choice of Daniel as the super-spy in new film Casino Royale - Ella, 14, can't wait.

He never usually talks publicly about the girl he had with his ex-wife, Scottish actress Fiona Loudon.

Ella and Fiona live in London, and Daniel knows his new role, which will make him a household name throughout the world, means his private life will be under more scrutiny than ever.

Daniel, 38, said: "Ella's proud of me being James Bond. I think she's comfortable with it. I try to communicate all the time about it. I'm very happy with the film, but I want to protect her.

"I don't bring her up in conversations much because the more I talk about her the more the Press have a right to take those photographs."

But he added: "I think she is eager to see the film."

Not since George Lazenby has an actor been so vilified for playing Bond - and Daniel hasn't even been seen by most film fans in the role yet.

Early reviews of the 21st Bond movie have named him as the best 007 since Sean Connery.

But, last year, when Daniel was revealed as the actor taking over from Pierce Brosnan, there was a fierce internet debate, with fans trying to do what no Bond baddie has done - get rid of him.

There were claims he felt seasick when he arrived on a speedboat for the London announcement. Also, it was said he didn't care for martinis, didn't like guns and couldn't drive.

Then came the fact he was too short (he's 5ft 11, hardly vertically challenged like Tom Cruise) had big ears, and the biggest no-no, that he was the first Blond Bond.

Daniel, knowing the critics who've seen the film are impressed by the gritty, more violent themes, said: "The internet is a wonderful voice piece for people to use, and I'm a great believer in it. But it's a place where I can't enter into a debate, because people are entitled to their own opinions. It's democracy. All I can say is, go and see the movie.

"There's a passion about this, because people take it very close to their heart, as they have grown up with James Bond - so have I. "I was being criticised before I had presented anything, so it was name calling.

"I just had to be quiet and say, forget it. I can't think about it. I have to move forward and concentrate on getting this job right. But Daniel admitted that the backlash and criticism did get to him. He said: "It kind of affected me in a way. However prepared I was for it, I couldn't have seen that coming."

He added that he relied on his friends and family to spur him on. "That's what friends are for. If I do a piece, then the opinions of my friends and family mean a lot to me," he said.

And Daniel claimed he never thought about dyeing his hair.

He laughed: "Never for one second did I think about dyeing my hair. My hair was not an issue. The only thing I thought was that we're going to cut it short and I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to be thinking about what's on top of my head.

"Hopefully now it's not an issue. Hopefully people don't see it now. Hopefully I've got other things to offer than hair colour."

His friends may call him Mr Potato Head, but Daniel's charisma is undeniable.

Not only does he have a powerful screen presence but, with his rugged good looks, he has been lucky enough to romance stunning women such as Love Actually actress Heike Makatsch, his former girlfriend of seven years, supermodel Kate Moss, whom he briefly dated, and actress Sienna Miller.

On screen, he has filmed love scenes with some of Hollywood's most beautiful women, including Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sienna Miller.

Playing Bond means spending a lot of time between the sheets on camera.

Revealing a typical English sense of humour, Daniel said: "Love scene, oh, they're just momentous. They are usually cold studios with 15 people watching. I don't get off on that. What else can you do, you sort of cover up and sit and drink tea. Talk about the weather."

His main Bond girl in Casino Royale is played by French beauty Eva Green, who starred in The Dreamers and Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven.

"I don't know if they listened but I did talk about Eva being cast," said Daniel. "Eva just has amystery about her, and that was what was needed. She has something going on, and those are key elements in a movie."

And Daniel also gets to grips with gorgeous Italian actress Caterina Murino, who makes her entrance in a beach scene that carries more than a hint of Ursula Andress in Dr No.

Daniel's Bond is said to have more of the brooding intensity of Sean Connery or Timothy Dalton rather than the light-hearted Bonds of Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan.

He battles evil villain Le Chiffre, played by respected Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen.

In his films, Daniel, best known for Brit gangster flick Layer Cake, excels at playing dark characters who have violent outbursts, from Francis Bacon's petty criminal gay lover in Love is the Devil, to a rogue gangster in Road to Perdition, an assassin priest in Elizabeth and passionate poet Ted Hughes in Sylvia.

Daniel confirmed that the new film is "darker". And it's younger too.

He added: "We go back to the beginning. We meet this person for the first time, we're obviously suspending belief. He is a raw character. He's someone who's extensively violent.

"He's not out for revenge, he's out for justice.

"But he meets someone who he falls in love with and we have a huge love story. There's a great card sequence with him, and he gets his heart broken because he gets double crossed.

"It creates this person who is no longer emotional, but he is actually going to go out for revenge, which you'll see right at the end of the movie.

"The bad guys are not politically or religiously affiliated. They represent themselves individually, and a network of people who are trying to destabilise the world's economy so they can take as much as they can."

Chester-born Daniel will certainly look the part as British super spy 007.

He worked on a tough physical regime to get in shape for Casino Royale, based on Ian Fleming's first book, and which is directed by Martin Campbell, who steered Brosnan to box-office glory with his first Bond movie, Golden Eye, a decade ago.

Pictures of Daniel looking buff coming out of the water in a pair of natty blue trunks had women's magazines all hot and bothered.

But does he have girls throwing themselves at him now?

He joked: "I have my girlfriend throwing herself at me occasionally.

"But it's not like I was trying to be sexy. I had to get fit because I had to be able to do stunts.

"I thought the only way to do that was to work out and get fit and buff and get physically into shape.

"Thank God I did, because I did as many of the stunts that I could - I got injured, I got hurt but I never missed a day of filming."

But it's usually Bond girls who we see enigmatically emerging from the water.

Daniel laughed: "Ursula Andress was before me. It was a little homage."

"I did a lot of weights. I wanted to bulk up quickly and so I had a lot of high protein diets and that sort of thing.

"By the time we got to the Bahamas, we kind of peaked, and that's where you see me walking out of the water. That was the peak of it, but we then kind of balanced it out."

Knowing he had to deliver a good Bond took its toll, and Daniel made sure he got drunk once aweek to unwind.

He said: "One night a week I drank myself stupid, which was important, otherwise I don't think I could have gotten through the film. I had to separate myself from the movie at least once a week and eat anything, eat cream cakes and just pig out."

Brosnan used to claim that the first film he saw in a cinema was a Bond movie.

Daniel played the same card. He explained: "When I went to the cinema for the first time it was Roger Moore's Live and Let Die. But Sean Connery defined the role. One of my favourite movies is From Russia with Love, particularly because it's with Robert Shaw. He plays the bad guy, and he's blond."

Daniel, who has signed a three-picture deal to play Bond, claims that he hasn't given it much thought yet.

He added: "If this does well, then I'll be making money. I'd love to have the money to buy art. I don't have an Aston Martin either, but I'd like one."

http://www.mi6.co.uk/news/index.php?itemid=4356&catid=2
"Love anyway. Live anyway. Choose to part of this anyway”
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honeyjes
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Post by honeyjes »

This is an interesting article in so much as it appears to be a synopsis of several other publications where they've blatantly done a cut and paste job and presented it as their interview with DC.
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honeyjes
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Post by honeyjes »

Another piece of the puzzle which is Daniel Craig, I don't think all of this article has been posted here, its a nice read anyway

Daniel Craig: A poet in motion

Daniel Craig first grabbed attention - and a loyal female fanbase - in the TV series Our Friends in the North. Could his latest role, as Ted Hughes opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in Sylvia, be his Hollywood calling-card?
By Liz Hoggard
Wednesday, 28 January 2004

There is genuine heat around the British actor Daniel Craig at the moment. Hollywood is paying close attention to his latest film, Sylvia (released this weekend), in which he plays the young Ted Hughes opposite Gwyneth Paltrow as the American poet Sylvia Plath. The New York Times rhapsodised about his sexual magnetism ("Like a rangy, wounded bird of prey") and Newsweek described his performance as "saturnine" and "smouldering".

There is genuine heat around the British actor Daniel Craig at the moment. Hollywood is paying close attention to his latest film, Sylvia (released this weekend), in which he plays the young Ted Hughes opposite Gwyneth Paltrow as the American poet Sylvia Plath. The New York Times rhapsodised about his sexual magnetism ("Like a rangy, wounded bird of prey") and Newsweek described his performance as "saturnine" and "smouldering".

He burns up the stage, too. Appearing at London's Royal Court in 2002 in Caryl Churchill's two-hander A Number, with Michael Gambon, he gave the most physically compelling performance I have ever seen. Critics debated how Craig - dressed in simple jeans and T-shirt - was able to play three cloned brothers and make each of them appear utterly different. "It was my dream theatre, an hour long, and then everyone's out in the bar talking about it," Craig laughs.

On screen, Daniel Craig exudes a weird beauty, with those extraordinary blue eyes that can switch from innocent to chilling in an instant. In the flesh, the actor is slighter, his blond hair stuffed inside a beanie hat, and he's low-key scruffy in jeans and a sweater.

When Craig first came to our attention in 1996, playing the troubled musician Geordie Peacock in the television series Our Friends in the North, it looked like he'd become conventional TV totty. He followed up Geordie with the period romp Moll Flanders, where he energetically ravished Alex Kingston. Thrilled by his sculpted looks and propensity for taking his kit off, women's magazines queued up to profile him as a gritty Northern sex symbol.

But then, Craig did something interesting. He stopped doing any lifestyle press.

Meanwhile, his profile was raised by daring film choices - including playing Francis Bacon's lover, George Dyer, in John Maybury's 1998 arthouse masterpiece, Love is the Devil (he spent half the film in Y-fronts or covered in surgical sealant for the S&M-themed love scenes).
If Jude Law and Orlando Bloom embody heroic prettiness, Craig specialises in slow-burn sensuality. The sex scenes between him and the 67-year-old actress Anne Reid in last year's The Mother were explosively raw. It was also Craig's best performance yet. I tell him I found his character (who beds a grandmother and her daughter) frankly terrifying. Surely he is exactly the type of man 37-year-old women should avoid? Craig laughs heartily. "Well, that's the genius of Mr Kureishi's script. He digs in to the wound. You think, 'Oh no, don't please. Oh you did? Oh, God.'"

No one does humiliation quite like Craig. Playing Paul Newman's gangster son in Sam Mendes's Road to Perdition, he turned a vicious cameo into a flawed flesh-and-blood character. (The story goes that Mendes was watching television with Patrick Marber when Sword of Honour came on starring Craig. "That's who you want for Connor," Marber insisted.)
Despite this impressive performance, it is Sylvia that will undoubtedly be Craig's Hollywood calling card. He gives a solid, unshowy performance as Hughes, preferring to convey a serious artist and flawed husband than some tiresome Byronic figure. "I didn't want Ted to be an impersonation. I've got hours of tape of his poetry. I've been listening to him for as long as I can remember. But nobody speaks like Ted Hughes any more. His accent is a mixture of Yorkshire-cum-Cambridge-cum London; it's bizarre."

Craig is full of sympathy for Hughes, who waited nearly 40 years before publishing 1998's autobiographical volume of poems, Birthday Letters, about his life with Plath (three months before his death from cancer). "I respect him greatly for keeping his counsel for all those years. A lot of people thought, 'Well, there you go, he might as well have admitted his guilt about killing her', but my heart says no, it's about something far more complicated than that, something we will never know about, something we have no right to know about.

"And I don't think doing this film is about uncovering that element. It's about uncovering an incredible moment in world literature, the coming together of these two souls, these two amazing people and the shit that flew. And the way we moved into the late 1950s, this supposed renaissance of world thinking - the beginnings of feminism, the beginnings of a lot of free thinking, which was incredibly exciting, but incredibly tied down by the rigidity of British society. Sylvia Plath was educated to marry. She was sent to a very good school, but never really to do anything. She had to balance being a perfect homemaker with being an artist and mother. I have a huge amount of sympathy for that because I don't think things really changed a great deal for women until the 1970s."

For the past seven years, Craig has lived with the German actress Heike Makatsch (Alan Rickman's predatory secretary in Love, Actually). He also has a 10-year-old daughter from a brief marriage at the age of 23. But he is touched by the romanticism of Hughes and Plath marrying after only knowing each other for four months. "When you're young you don't think in that way because you think the future can't hurt you."

Arguably, Sylvia offers Craig his least interesting role. Not because the film is bad. On the contrary, its director Christine Jeffs offers a wonderfully interior portrait of grief. Paltrow, almost unrecognisable for once, is dazzling as Plath. But Jeffs, who fought to cast Craig as Hughes, is just not terribly interested in Ted. After the initial courtship between the two poets at Cambridge, we are caught up in Sylvia's trajectory from betrayed wife to suicidal artist. One senses Craig knew this. "To be absolutely honest, it's Gwyneth Paltrow playing Sylvia," he says. "But that doesn't stop me going, 'OK, right, I'll get on with what I'm doing.' And there is a freedom to that, because you can do what you want."

After rave reviews for Love is the Devil, Craig dabbled with the action thriller, playing Angelina Jolie's archaeologist lover in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). He got to travel to Cambodia, and the chemistry with Jolie was terrific, but today he admits that it was not a good career choice. "It's not a criticism, but it's just not my bag." In independent film, he says, you have a freedom with the subject matter. "The ending in the script may not be the one you shoot. There's no debate about 'I don't think the audience is going to like this character'. Tough shit. If you want likeable characters, go and watch Lord of the Rings or Master and Commander

Craig was born in Chester in 1968 and moved to Liverpool when his teacher mother separated from his father (she is now married to the painter Max Blond). He knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of six and spent his adolescence hanging round Liverpool's Everyman Theatre. His mother packed him off, aged 16, to London's National Youth Theatre. He worked as a waiter and slept on friends' floors before he was accepted by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (his contemporaries included Ewan McGregor and Joseph Fiennes). After graduation, he won a few theatre roles, and was cast as "either a fascist or fop" on TV. It was the era of Merchant-Ivory and his long blond fringe marked him out as irredeemably posh. But then Simon Cellan Jones cast him for Our Friends in the North and everything changed.

Not everyone gets Craig, though. In the February issue of GQ magazine there is a funny interview with Paltrow about the making of Sylvia. While she waxes lyrical about her close friendship with Jude Law, she seems genuinely puzzled by Craig: "It's so funny, women really like him. They're really drawn to him sexually. They think he's a smouldering, charismatic, sexy man. People keep commenting on the chemistry between us. But that's acting... They did a good job of making us seem similar in height, but you can tell he's not 6ft 4in." Ouch.
For his part, Craig is unfailingly chivalrous about Paltrow, but his greatest warmth is reserved for Gwyneth's mother, Blythe Danner, who plays Aurelia Plath in the film. "Isn't she extraordinary? I can't say enough about how riveting she is on screen."

Apart from Sylvia, and the recently wrapped Enduring Love (adapted from Ian McEwan's best-selling novel and directed by Roger Michell) with Rhys Ifans and Samantha Morton, Craig has three other films in production. He recently shot Matthew Vaughan's Layer Cake and next up he's filming a psychological thriller, The Jacket, with Adrien Brody, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kris Kristofferson. John Maybury is directing (his first film since Love is the Devil) for George Clooney and Stephen Soderbergh's production company, Section Eight, so the omens look good.
Craig has said he wants to do more comedy, and watching those first episodes of Our Friends in the North again, the riffs between Craig and Christopher Eccleston are like the best kind of stand-up. Does he see himself as a physical comedian? "Maybe, I don't know. I think The Mother's very funny, but that's just me. At the first cast and crew screening, a few people went, 'Wow this is a bit serious...' And then we took it to Cannes and they started laughing from the word go, because it's horribly dark and funny. And I thought, 'Yes we've got them!"

'Sylvia' goes on nationwide release on Friday
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sharmaine
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Post by sharmaine »

Thank you honeyjes....always nice to read some of the old stuff.
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