Queer

[videnovasan]

There you go!


Daniel Craig on James Bond, sex and Queer: ‘Am I pushing it too far?
In a rare interview, the actor talks about masculinity and why he left 007 behind to play an addict in love with a younger man in his new film.

Jonathan Dean
Executive Editor, Interviews, Culture & Books
Sunday December 08 2024, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

One day at drama school Daniel Craig wrote down three words that changed his life. It was the 1980s and the young man with striking blue eyes was just another wannabe — an actor trying not to be rejected. So he listened intently when the theatre director Declan Donnellan came by for a lecture, and wrote in a notebook that he still owns today: “Don’t get bitter.”

“And look,” thunders Craig, a man who always appears to be talking as if he wants someone in the next room to hear. “I can be jealous. To this day I think, ‘Oh, why has he got that part?’ But you have to own failure because you can’t control what other people think. You just have to hope and get on with it because, clearly, I could not have planned for my life. This just happened — and it is still happening? F***ing amazing!’”

Craig is exhilarating company — which is perhaps a surprise. After all, for 15 years he was the most serious Bond, playing the spy from Casino Royale to No Time to Die with such gravitas he ran the gamut from grieving to dying. It was the RSC does 007, and it was only towards the end of his tenure that Craig loosened up — as the camp Southern detective in the Knives Out films; performing a sashaying dance for a vodka advert; and, now, in Luca Guadagnino’s sweaty, seamy Queer — a film that, to casual observers, is as bold an artistic statement as when Bob Dylan went electric.

In the film, based on a semi-autobiographical William S Burroughs novella, Craig plays William Lee. It is Mexico City in the 1950s and Lee slumps around bars drunk, high and horny, starting an erotic and narcotic affair with a much younger lover. Soon Craig is naked in the jungle, whacked out on ayahuasca, in scenes that take me back to the more transgressive roles of his early career — to the extreme Francis Bacon biopic Love Is the Devil (1998), in which he played the artist’s lover George Dyer, or The Mother (2003), where he embarks on an affair with a sixtysomething woman. Because this experimentation is what Craig always did. “So no, it does not feel strange at all,” he says with a shrug of Queer, which has been banned in Turkey and made headlines for its oral sex — Craig having moved from Blofeld to blow job.

I say the sex feels, well, messy. “Yes, because sex is messy,” Craig says. We meet for coffee in London, the actor in snug winter wear, arriving casually in a busy neighbourhood with sunglasses his only disguise. But such realistic sex, I add, is not often shown. “Quite. There are terrible sex scenes and I’ve probably been in a few. So it was important not to be coy.” All sex scenes, though — getting it on with a colleague, watched by crew — are odd, so Queer deserves credit for filming ones that drip with desire. “It’s what sex is,” Craig says. “As well as loving, it’s animal-like…”

He pauses. “I couldn’t have done this while doing Bond.” Why not? “It would look reactionary, like I was showing my range.” He rolls his eyes. “Early on with Bond I thought I had to do other work, but I didn’t. I was becoming a star, whatever that means, and people wanted me in their films. Incredible. Most actors are out of work for large chunks so you take your job offers — but they left me empty. Then, bottom line, I got paid. I was so exhausted at the end of a Bond it would take me six months to recover emotionally. I always had the attitude that life must come first and, when work came first for a while, it strung me out.”

Workload aside, I wonder why Craig could not have made Queer after, say, the role-cementing, 50th anniversary celebration of Skyfall? “Are we fantasising now?” But it would have been a statement. “What kind of statement?” Going from five decades of Bond’s masculinity to, er, Queer? “But it’s just not a conversation I wanted. I had it all the way through Bond anyway. Could there be this Bond? That Bond? So anything that is going to inflame that conversation? No — life’s too short.”

Yet Queer features the line: “Conquer ignorance and hate with knowledge and love.” Wouldn’t it have been intriguing for a mid-Bond Craig to lead fans to a film in which he plays a gay man? “But you are talking about something I’m not interested in,” he rebuffs. “Sexuality is the least interesting thing to me in this film. I mean, we all f***. There’s a headline. ‘We all f***!’ Let’s be grown-ups.”

Craig is 56 and clearly having the time of his life. He is hugely proud of Bond, but the time away from his family because of those films has led him to adjust what he takes on. Now he splits his time between New York and London with his wife, Rachel Weisz, and their six-year-old daughter, Grace, choosing roles that fit around them.

“I live a busy life and so does my wife. We have children. I think how work will impact my life. [Craig has a grown-up daughter from a previous relationship, while Weisz has a teenage son with the director Darren Aronofsky.]” It is an enviable balance and very little suggests a man more at ease than this summer, when Craig took to wearing bold and bright clothes at the Venice Film Festival and then Paris Fashion Week, his long hair loose — generating headlines that saluted his “sublime midlife evolution” or, alternatively, a couple’s raid on a “jazzy vintage shop”.
It was a far cry from the dinner jacket he had propped himself up in for 15 years. Craig laughs. “I don’t sit around with a bunch of people at a big table and go, ‘OK, guys, what’s my image for this year?’” Instead, he simply met the fashion designer Jonathan Anderson. “And his clothes are out there,” he says. “I’d never usually wear stuff like that, but I was, like, f*** it — am I pushing it too far? I don’t know. It just feels fun.”

When he was Bond, did the studio, Eon, control his image? “No, but the last thing I’d want is to screw with the brand. That’s shooting yourself in the foot. Again, people would ask, ‘What conversation are you trying to raise?’ I don’t have the energy.”

Another conversation Craig has not had time for of late is who may replace him as Bond — indeed, when others have asked, he has said he does not care. “But of course I care!” he says when I raise it. “I keep saying I don’t, because people ask me all the time and I’m an ornery, grumpy old man, so I say I don’t give a shit. But I care about it deeply — deeply. I care what the franchise does, because I love Barbara [Broccoli] and Michael [G Wilson, the producers]. But it’s not my decision or problem. I wish them luck.”

Broccoli has said that every new actor sets the template for the latest series — what did Craig bring to the role? “Oh, f*** off!” he roars. “I don’t know. I was a rabbit in headlights.”

Craig was born in Chester in 1968, moving to the Wirral with his mother and sister when his parents divorced. In 1984 he joined the National Youth Theatre and moved to London, but it was not until the mid-1990s that his career really took off. He credits the BBC series Our Friends in the North for teaching him how to act on camera and, after that, the roles came fast, with the best directors around: Roger Michell (Enduring Love); Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition); Steven Spielberg (Munich). Craig brought a steeliness and confidence to the screen but always mixed with vulnerability — a blend he has arguably never done better than in Guadagnino’s Queer.

I bring up something he once said about acting, just before he took on Bond: “Nobody’s going to take notice unless you go, ‘Look at me!’” Does he still believe that?

“What do I think about that…” He mutters a bit. “Well, I’m always looking for a pragmatic solution to the problem of dressing up and showing off, which is what acting is. It is, ‘Look at me! Love me!’ But you have to own that, because I know what people think of actors — ‘Oh, silly people.’ Yet I’m proud of what I do and it’s important that people do what I do.”

In what way? “Because it is being eroded,” he says. He mentions Dahomey, this year’s documentary about art returned from France to Benin. “It makes you think what our culture means and, without it, we are nothing. Any government that takes funding away from our cultural life is stripping us, so if I play a very small part in creating some culture, then I’m incredibly proud.”

“Look,” he continues, on a roll. “I grew up with subsidised theatre. Some was brilliant, some was shit. But it flooded money into this country and enriched it. Also, my family didn’t have any money. My mother was a teacher. It was pitiful the wage she was on. I don’t look at my upbringing as harsh — just normal. But I went to drama school on a full ride. That doesn’t exist any more. Who can afford to go to drama school now?”

So without funding Craig would simply not be an actor? “No. It’s a f***ing tragedy.” Is there anything he does to help? “I do what I can.” He has been working with the Brit School, the state-run talent factory in south London. “But I can’t save the world. You need politicians to step up to the plate — not actors.”

Craig put a lot of himself into Queer. “People I’ve known, lost, growing up in London …” He played drunk by thinking how “drunk people don’t want to appear drunk” and relished Lee’s layers. “Male vulnerability is really interesting because, as tough as men appear to be, they’re all vulnerable,” he says. “We all hide – from our kids, spouses, colleagues. The armour of masculinity is there for a reason and what is that reason? I’m always exploring it.”

His role in Queer could — deservedly — lead to a first Oscar nod. Does he care? “Of course!” he blurts out. “Don’t be stupid, I’d be over the moon to get a nomination.” This is refreshing — few admit that awards matter.

“Well, it’s scary. Awards go the way of the wind, but I cannot say, ‘I don’t give a shit!’ Still, years ago I learnt how arbitrary this is. It was soul-destroying, rejection after rejection. Because you think, ‘Can I act?’ But there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s a coin toss in many ways, so you have to let it go. And it’s all gravy for me now.”

[videnovasan]

A good one!
https://collider.com/daniel-craig-love- ... vil-queer/

[Dunda]

Daniel is nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role at the Screen Actors Guild Awards


https://www.sagawards.org/media/news/re ... ild-awards

[Germangirl]

Thats wonderful. Would be lovely if he could win this.

[videnovasan]

First BAFTA's?!?!?! WTF.......
And this is a good article...
https://www.intomore.com/culture/queers ... inal-form/

[Germangirl]

So, the Baftas denied him the nod. That will hurt, as its British and will endanger his Oscar nod. How stupid they Are.

[Vanquish]

*Accidental double post*

[Vanquish]

Kinda resigning myself to the fact he will get snubbed. Regardless, Queer is the best Daniel Craig has been on screen. Close to perfection. If the film is too 'weird' and edgy for the Academy. Then, whatever. Let's hope he makes Othello soon and is back in the Oscar race

[Germangirl]

Yeah, me too. Some get it for free, Bit what does he has to do to get it?
But whatever, he will get over it. Consudering that the Film is neither a real critical Not audience success, he got far.

[videnovasan]

Yeah, me too. Some get it for free, Bit what does he has to do to get it?
But whatever, he will get over it. Consudering that the Film is neither a real critical Not audience success, he got far.

Queer is not an audience pleaser.....but his performance is outstanding......As for Hugh Grant in Heretic or Stan in The apprentice.......Good but not an exceptional in both cases....I can't stand Brody for unknown reason. Ralph I like. As for Domingo....no opinion. Haven't seen the movie, and can't remember seeing him in anything.....

[Germangirl]

I would have wished for recognition in his own Country.

[videnovasan]

I would have wished for recognition in his own Country.

Me too.....

[Dunda]

No Oscar nomination

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 236115626/

[Germangirl]

Was somehow clear. Dunno what Else he needs to do?
I guess at some point he was rather sure he would get the nod and openly confessed, he would Like it.
Like I Said, some get it for one good Performance

[videnovasan]

Have they seen the movie I wonder .......I've read somewhere that many of the voters don't watch the movies.....