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Daniel Craig on "Layer Cake"

By Jenny Halper
www.cinecon.com
May 10, 2005
View online

My friend Danielle loves Daniel Craig so much, she wanted me to have him sign a pillow embroidered with his picture. “He’ll think it’s funny,” she insisted. I said: “I think he’ll think I’m nuts.”

Accustomed to crazily devoted fans in London (where he graces the cover of almost every magazine), Craig’s the prime target of the British paparazzi, who call him on his cell phone and virtually camp out on his lawn. And whether or not he’s the next James Bond (a topic on which there’s been much speculation), with upcoming untitled projects directed by the likes of Douglas McGrath and Steven Spielberg, he’s bound to be a major star in the United States.

Following “Sylvia” and “Enduring Love” with the central role in Matthew Vaughn’s slickly effective film version of J.J. Connolly’s novel “Layer Cake,” Craig proves that acting chops and undeniable charisma make a winning combination.

Q: Are you the next James Bond?
DANIEL: I don't know. I have no idea…I really don't…the studio knows much better than I do.

Q: Would it change your career?
DANIEL: It certainly would.

Q: What do you think about that?
DANIEL: I would think you'd have to be stupid not to consider something like that, if it came along you'd have to consider it really carefully. But I haven't given it any serious thought. Whatever's going on, is going on. I'm not in a bad place, but I don't have anything to say about it. I wish I could give you scoop, but there's no scoop. It's beyond me.

Q: But you would consider doing it?
DANIEL: If you're not in this game for doing something like that, what are you in the game for? If there aren't opportunities to become famous and wealthy and successful, then why are you doing it? It's such an abstract thing that I can't really…for a usual project, I get sent the script and then we talk about it, and none of that's happened, so basically I'm as far away as I could be. But, you know, it's a tricky thing to think about it. Because I'm sure by doing that, you gain things, like a bigger fence around your house. But there's also a downside to it.

Q: Have you been told you're in the running?
DANIEL: I've been told absolutely nothing.

Q: What have you thought about?
DANIEL: What I'd wear, what kind of car I'd get to drive….(laughs) It's not all encompassing.

Q: Would you be really careful to stay away from other big budget franchises?
DANIEL: That's another thing- if I did James Bond, independent directors might not be interested in me.

Q: And that would be a downside?
DANIEL: Yeah, sure. I haven't gone down the road that far with it…it's all speculation. When I was in Texas the phone starts ringing and they're like "Congratulations!" and I'm like "what have I won?" (Consideration) was as much a surprise to me as to anybody.

Q: No other franchise has had the same longevity as Bond…
DANIEL: I think that he's an iconographic figure in movies, everyone always, at some point, sees a Bond movie or watches a movie that's been inspired by a bond movie. It's incredible that it's lasted, that it's still there. But I don't know what to say to you about it really...I could sit hear and talk about playing Batman. It means nothing.

Q: What were you doing before then?
DANIEL: I'd always wanted to be an actor. My earliest memories are of dressing up, trying to get a lot of attention. I'd love to act, and I come from an artistic family in some respects. It's a great outlet, and at it's very best it sort of changes people's opinions about things, and attitudes towards things, whatever you do it's political, and everything you do should be political- you should be trying to make a point about something. And if you can manage to do that, then you're succeeding as an artist.

Q: What kind of point are you trying to make?
DANIEL: It depends on the movie.

Q: What was your training?
DANIEL: Three years at Guildhall, where they teach you how you're not going to be employed (laughs). No, I got a lot out of it, but mainly I realized I had to get out of bed in the morning and take (acting) seriously.

Q: Do you do theater too?
DANIEL: I do theater, but singing and dancing…not really, no, I can hold a note, just about, and I can do two steps, but that's about it.

Q: And you recently did "A Number" with Michael Gambon?
DANIEL: That's right! Two years ago now, but we premiered that in London at the Royal Court, which was fabulous. And they just did it here.

Q: Did you get to see it?
DANIEL: No, and I really wanted to see it as well, to see how Sam Shepherd was going to do it. It exhausted me on a lot of occasions.

Q: Were you nervous about working with a first time director?
DANIEL: A little bit, but Matthew's made two incredibly fantastic movies, and he'd always wanted to direct, and he was great. He cast it so successfully, I think it's a fantastic cast, and he got great technical crew, he got a great DP, and he worked the whole thing out…he had a good script. We shot the script, which is unusual in movie making. What you see is basically what I read the first day. Matthew's quite a successful movie maker. He got me involved at every level, he wanted my input on things, so I felt very much a part of the movie.

Q: I heard Guy Ritchie had been interested?
DANIEL: He was, but there were other things he wanted to do, and Matthew was looking around for another director, and suddenly went, "I want to do this." Another appealing thing about it, when people make decisions like that, they've got to be diligent. He was, and he has got a way with the camera.

Q: Is it hard to play a character you don't know anything about?
DANIEL: I wanted to make him as easy in anybody's company as possible, but to make that happen, I had to create a character who was very relaxed…it didn't matter if someone had a gun or someone had a checkbook. Same deal. And I just sort of based it on my idea of a modern businessman, because he believes it to be a business, and I think most criminals do. It's just a business, it's the business they're in and they treat it as such. In fact, there's probably more people on the street who are criminals than…the criminals who drive the flashy cars are lower on the scale. The people who you don't see are the ones who are the wealthiest and most successful. And probably are in government.

Q: Is the book accurate in that respect?
DANIEL: Well, the book itself…I mean that's…I know people who have read it who've been involved in the criminal world and said it's very, very accurate.

Q: Your character doesn't have a name…
DANIEL: Cynthia! (laughs)

Q: Did you come up with a back story for your character in "Layer Cake"?
DANIEL: I did and didn't. He came from somewhere, he changed himself. So that was the point. He could have been very low working class, and he changed the way he looked just so he could blend in.

Q: Were you nervous about the love scene with Sienna Miller?
DANIEL: No! Did I look nervous? (laughs) I don't think you can ever really make yourself comfortable when you're doing a sex scene where there are ten people in the room you don't know that well. They're not exactly…sexy. (laughs)

Q: Do you think it's absurd that drugs are illegal?
DANIEL: I do, I think we kid ourselves that people…that governments…don't make huge amounts of money…it's good hard cash. And it's untraceable, that's what people use drugs for, you've got a huge amount of cash and no one knows about it. And we kid ourselves about the fact that people don't still use them. And more money can be made off them if they are illegal. The whole system is hypocritical. I think (the problem) should be addressed in much more intelligent way, but it won't happen till people stop using them for their own good.

Q: Was this conversation had on set?
DANIEL: We had this conversation while we were making it, but that's not necessarily the message. Hopefully it's layered…(laughs). But it is, it sort of helps people raise those questions. And the violence…you get the repercussions of it. Anybody who dies, you see why they died, the reasons for it. And on a selfish level, that makes it more dramatic. If you're watching a film and twenty people die within the first fifteen minutes, it's like, "well, if I see another death now, I don't care." You can't make a gangster movie without violence, you can't make a crime movie without violence, but those things were carefully thought through.

Q: Your character isn't really a good guy, but we root for him- why do you think that is?
DANIEL: He's on a journey, he's trying to escape, become legitimate, stop dealing with these people. And hopefully you see his moral struggle, but at the end of the day he's a criminal. But we like him, that's what we love in films like the great train robbery, we love thinking someone might be getting away with it. I think we fall for that. And we kidded Sony, they thought we were shooting a different ending than we shot, Sienna and I driving off into the sunset. We shot that (the final) scene, and then Matthew cut it together and showed it to them, and they went up the fucking wall. But it tested really positively. You know, the fact is he gets shot by Sid, by someone who was personally affected by him, was cut up by this man stealing his girlfriend.

Q: What's next for you?
DANIEL: I'm going to do this Spielberg project in July, if all goes well.

Q: What character do you play?
DANIEL: I can't talk, I'll get shot.

Q: What was it like to meet Spielberg?
DANIEL: Terrifying. Well, not terrifying, it was actually great for me to meet Spielberg, I just had one of those phone calls like, Steven Spielberg wants to meet you, and I thought "fuck off, you've got to be joking," Next thing I'm on a train to Paris. I went into the meeting and walked out and went, "that went quite well."

Q: What genre is the film?
DANIEL: It's a modern day factual story.

Q: And you're working on a Douglas McGrath project?
DANIEL: That's based on Truman Capote's experience of writing in cold blood in Kansas, and his relationship with Perry Smith, who I play, one of the murderers. And it's set in New York, Kansas, Texas. It's a fabulous script and Sigourney Weaver's in it, Sandra Bullock, Isabella Rossellini, Juliette Stevenson, Toby Jones, a British actor who's playing Truman Capote, unbelievable.

Q: And Gwyneth Paltrow?
DANIEL: And Gwyneth! Oh, jeez, Gwyneth'll kill me! And Gwyneth.

Q: How was it learning an American accent?
DANIEL: Great. Terrifying but great. I had a great voice coach who's working with Toby as well. I think we got it right.

Q: What's the secret to doing an accent well?
DANIEL: Not mimicking, I think, you've got to find it in your voice. I talk like this, and if I start (high pitch) talking like this it's something else. You can start talking in a different way, and that's wrong, it should be you. You get away with…even people in New York slip into Midwest sometimes. When you're pretending to be someone else, you need a different accent, and that's annoying, because in English I'll slip into Northern accent, I'll slip into southern accent. I use tapes, I have that on me all the time.