Tiny Winters

Daniel Wroughton Craig is a BAFTA-nominated British actor best known as the sixth actor to portray secret agent James Bond in the official film series from EON Productions. He made his debut as the character on 14 November 2006, in the 21st official Bond film, Casino Royale, to much critical acclaim.

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• I go through life thinking it's all going to end tomorrow.

• I don't believe in self-promotion, really I can't be arsed.

• I always wanted to be an actor. I had the arrogance to believe I couldn't be anything else.

• As far as I'm concerned, I want to be nowhere else. It's difficult in film because everybody wants to make a safe bet with roles. But if you are going to do stuff then you should be getting strong reactions. I don't want audiences to be going, "Yeah, that's all right."

• It's something else. I'm speechless. I've just got to step up to the plate and deal with it. I had a confidence about it but then that's because of the people around me who made me feel good about it. I knew positively on Monday. I was in Baltimore when I took the call. My first reaction was I needed a drink.

• I hate handguns. Handguns are used to shoot people and as long as they are around, people will shoot each other. That's a simple fact. I've seen a bullet wound and it was a mess. It was on a shoot and it scared me. Bullets have a nasty habit of finding their target and that's what's scary about them.

• If I went onto the Internet and started looking at what some people were saying about me - which, sadly, I have done - it would drive me insane.
  • Interview with Entertainment Weekly magazine.

On James Bond

• I kind of feel that if you look at the track record of most Bonds - I mean Sean Connery obviously defined the part, and even he struggled for a while to get rid of the mantle. That's the pitfall and it could happen to me. I've been working so hard, for however long it is I've been doing this, to try and stick to doing stuff I totally believe in and that would be wiped out. I thought, God, this is all right: I'm doing what I want to do. And that was a huge weight off my shoulders.

• I just wanted to see him make a few mistakes. I want to make the audience believe that it's all going to go wrong and then when it goes right it's much more exciting. Every day you pick up an injury and you're battered and bruised. If you're not physically fit then it's difficult to get through. I'm a Bond fan. If I go and see a Bond movie there are certain things I think should be in it. And they're there. We've got them in spades. Nobody knows more than I do how important this is, and it's my job to get it right.

• I didn't expect this backlash. You take it in, you can't help it. I've been trying to give 110 per cent since the beginning but after all the fuss, maybe I started giving 115 per cent.

• I hope it's going to be liberating. I'm not putting any negative spin on this because to be typecast as James Bond is a very high-class problem for an actor, and I'm certainly going to try to get as much out of it as I can. Of course I am always going to think about whether it is going to limit what I do. I plan for it not to, but if it does, I'll approach that problem when it comes.

• I wanted to do as much of the action work as I could, so that the audience can see it's me and it's real. I feel like I became a sportsman of sorts, and that meant acquiring injuries and carrying on and bashing through to the next level of pain. Although the stunt team did fantastic work to make sure that everything was as safe as possible, if you don't get bruised playing Bond, you're not doing it properly. I had black eyes, I had cuts, I was bruised, I had muscle strains, and I took a lot of painkillers. But it was part of the job. As much as I was hurt, the stuntmen were in much more pain.

• I was affected by it - of course I was. What bothered me was that I was being criticized before I had done the work. I wasn't going to get into an argument with these people, so my only response was, 'See the movie and then you have the right to criticize, but first see what I am trying to do.' It strengthened my resolve. I was hurt by it, but it just made me try harder. The pressure was there. I know a lot of people feel very passionate about the Bond movies, but so do I, so I just got on with it. What I tried to achieve was just making a movie people will want to go and see, and I think we have made a great movie. One of the things I was criticized for was that I looked like a bad guy, but I was happy with that because I think true good guys have to step into the dark side to do their job. I wanted people to question Bond's morals and his judgment.

• Sean Connery set and defined the character. He did something extraordinary with that role. He was bad, sexy, animalistic and stylish, and it is because of him I am here today. I wanted Sean Connery's approval and he sent me messages of support, which meant a lot to me.