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Biography
The world is full of what ifs, what might
have beens. Where would we be now if we'd been braver, more loyal to our
dreams? Would we be richer? More famous? Happier? Daniel Craig is a fine
modern example of how things can turn out for the best. After the
uproarious success of the series Our Friends In The North, he was cast
by the tabloids as tough northern totty. Stereotyping TV offers came
flooding in, lifestyle magazines were constantly knocking at his door.
At the very least, he was all set to be the next Jimmy Nail. His mother spent a lot of time at the city's famously left-wing Everyman Theatre, then in its heyday with Bernard Hill, Julie Walters, Willy Russell and Alan Bleasdale strutting their stuff. The young boy would soak in the life onstage and in the Green Room, enjoying the larger-than-life camaraderie. It was this, and seeing these familiar faces on TV, that convinced Craig that he too would become an actor. He now claims this epiphany took place when he was just 6. When Daniel was 9, the family would move to the Wirrel where, having failed his 11-Plus, he was sent to a tough secondary modern. He played rugby, supported the then near-invincible Liverpool FC and joined in with the school's plays, but academically he was not a good student. This is not to say he was disinterested as he reacted well when his mother (who'd get remarried to the artist Max Blond) fed his imagination with literature. Indeed, having received Ted Hughes' Crow
on his 10th birthday, he would even sneak into a local girls' grammar
school to hear Hughes read selections from his work (he recalls Hughes'
voice being a disappointing monotone). It was just that play-acting was
all he ever wanted to do, and this meant the "realistic"
play-acting of the Everyman. To Craig and his classmates, Shakespeare
was a foreign language and classical theatre just upper-class poncing
around onstage. Tired of the beatings, when grown he turns to trainer Morgan Freeman and learns to box, his victories making him a symbol of racial unity. Craig would turn up as the former head bully, now a cruel and corrupt officer in the state security force, menacing the hero's girl and generally asking for it big-time. And, of course, this being John Avildsen's anti-apartheid version of his own Rocky, get it he does. Craig would later explain that the only roles available to British actors in the early Nineties were Nazis or fops. He even admits to cultivating a tousled mop in the hope of scoring a Merchant-Ivory part. This situation certainly explains why his second outing saw him as a mean German officer, battling it out with Sean Patrick Flanery's Young Indiana Jones in Daredevils Of The Desert. This, written by Frank Darabont (soon to find fame with The Shawshank Redemption), had begun as an episode of the Young Indie TV series, then been extended to two hours and released to video. In it, Flanery would aid the Brits and
Aussies in an attack on a Turkish-held desert town, become involved in
intrigue with a glamorous spy (Catherine
Zeta Jones in a very early Hollywood outing) and finally get into a
major scrap with Daniel. The film was also notable for its extensive use
of action footage from director Simon Wincer's earlier work The
Lighthorsemen. Craig would play the soldier, cold and
carrying himself with military precision until he cracks when his
cell-mates reveal that Christabelle, the girl he adores, is no more than
a common tart. It was a great success, for Daniel in particular, The
Independent review saying that he"contains his violence like an
unexploded mine". Sadly, in the US only seven of the first 13 shows were aired while, in the UK, the pilot was screened at Christmas, 1992, but the series remained unseen. Nevertheless, things were looking good for Daniel. Having met and married a Scottish actress, 1992 saw him become a father for the first time, his wife bearing him a daughter. This busy beginning did not, though, lead to a meteoric rise, rather a gradual consolidation. 1993 saw Daniel appear in episodes of the news satire Drop The Dead Donkey, the hard-hitting police corruption series Between The Lines, and the soft country cop caper Heartbeat. Onstage, he appeared at the Royal National Theatre in the original London production of Angels In America, the fantastical, Pulitzer Prize-winning AIDS drama. Here he would play four roles, one being that of Joseph Porter Pitt, a married but secretly homosexual Republican protege of the infamous Roy Cohn. There'd also be two major TV dramas. First came Sharpe's Eagle, a continuance of Bernard Cornwell's Peninsular War saga. Here Sean Bean's Sharpe takes over a useless batallion, much to the chagrin of the regiment's commander who sets two beastly officers, one being Daniel, to insult, undermine and generally rile our hero. Daniel sets about this with much gusto,
even setting about Sharpe's girlfriend with a riding crop and
consequently accepts Sharpe's offer of a duel. Before this can take
place, though, they're sent out on patrol together and Daniel is done in
just as he's aiming to sneakily cause Sharpe's demise. As with his
earlier fascists, he made a fine fist of another brooding hoodlum. The
year would end with a brief role in the black comedy Genghis Cohn, where
Robert Lindsay played a former camp commandant haunted by a Jewish
comedian he'd murdered. Then, on the big screen, there'd be the
Disney movie A Kid In King Arthur's Court, a rewrite of the Mark Twain
novel, where an American kiddie is summoned accidentally by Merlin and
expected to save Camelot from an evil knight, who plans to steal the
kingdom and marry the king's beautiful daughter, played by Kate
Winslet. Daniel would appear as Master Kane, a stable-boy that
Winslet loves and longs to marry. It really was the most eye-catching part, as he returned home to start selling drugs for corrupt coppers before descending into dosserdom and, after a spot of arson, getting jailed for life - only to escape and rediscover his old mates. It was no wonder the tabloids latched onto him as a sexy reprobate and began to push him into a box reserved usually for soap opera hard-men. Craig quickly tired of the media circus, wishing instead to be seen as a "serious actor". This was fair enough, as Our Friends In The North was just one of many very varied onscreen appearances in 1996. Aside from showing up beside Gayle Hunnicutt and Ute Lemper in an episode of Tales From The Crypt, there was also a headlining role in the complicated police drama Kiss And Tell. Here Craig would play a sloppy cop, on
the verge of being fired, who stakes his career on catching a man
suspected of killing his missing wife. Daniel gets his psychologist
ex-girlfriend to romance the subject in order to con a confession out of
him, but grows desperately jealous when he listens in on their
conversations. Meanwhile, the missing wife, if she's alive, must be
found and treated for cancer. Returning from an initial trip to the new
world of Virginia, she poses as a lady in order to snag a rich hubbie,
only to fall for highwayman Daniel, himself pretending to be wealthy so
he can catch a wife capable of restoring his bankrupt estate. Obviously
made for one another, they would nevertheless endure a tempestuous
relationship that set a big TV audience's pulse racing. Naturally, this
didn't help Craig in his avoidance of beefcake status. He stopped doing
interviews altogether. It was a very classy production, involving such heavyweights as Miranda Richardson, Janet McTeer and Katrin Cartlidge, and, though some compared it to The English Patient (released the same year), it was a far more complex piece, working as a tone poem and a re-examination of the biopic, as well as being interspersed with interviews with real-life acquaintances of Saint-Exupery. It was no wonder, in a year that saw Craig deliver comedy horror, psychological drama, rough-house period romance and an art-house epic, that he didn't just want to be seen as a northern beefcake. Though he'd come to feel that movies would be his future, Daniel would still take TV and theatre parts if he found them sufficiently interesting. 1997 saw him move on to The Ice House where three women, suspected of lesbianism and witchery, live together in a country house (as one of them is the sultry and dangerous Frances Barber, lesbianism and witchery are easy accusations to make). The discovery of a corpse on the estate
revives an investigation into the disappearance of one of the women's
husband ten years before, with the locals and chief detective Corin
Redgrave keen for a conviction. Daniel would appear as Redgrave's
second-in-command, a man who, his marriage on the rocks, complicates the
issue by falling for one of the women, a magnetic but exasperating Kitty
Aldridge. Love and loyalty are tested as the deadly intrigue continues. More important, though, certainly in terms of Craig's off-screen life, would be Obsession, where he played a Zimbabwean stone-cutter doing restoration work in Berlin and seeking a photo of a man crossing the Niagara Falls on a tight-rope fifty years before, a man he believes had a tragic affair with his grandmother (Craig's grandmother, that is, not his own grandmother - though, given the nature of some of Daniel's later subject matter, that would not be beyond the realms of possibility). An incident involving an old shoplifter and brutal police is then the catalyst for a love triangle involving Craig, girl band member Heike Makatsch and a French scientist. His relationship with Makatsch would also blossom off-screen. She was a big star in Germany, with her own light entertainment show, and was just beginning to delve into more serious material. Outside Germany, audiences would know her best as the sexually predatory secretary who seduces Alan Rickman in Love Actually. She and Craig would be together for seven years, finally splitting in January, 2004. 1998 would be another good year onscreen, his best yet. First came a small but impressive role in Elizabeth where he played a monk involved in the Babington plot against the Queen, using a rock to smash in the head of one of Francis Walsingham's spies (an improvised moment, said Craig later). Then came another breakthrough when he starred alongside Derek Jacobi in John Maybury's Love Is The Devil. This was a biopic of the artist Francis Bacon, Jacobi playing him as cold and emotionally careless. Daniel would appear as George Dyer, a petty crook who breaks into Bacon's house and stays to become his lover, the price he pays being the gradual disintegration of his personality as Bacon treats him with growing disdain. It was a hard part and Craig was brave to
take it, as not only did he have to engage in various sado-masochistic
love scenes (one involving the burning of Bacon's flesh with a
cigarette) but he also had to survive a scene-chewing performance by
Jacobi. Revealing a rapid growth in his confidence and abilities, he did
both with great aplomb. It was a fascinating real-life story, as
Lynchehaun would flee to America where he'd be feted as a Republican
freedom-fighter for his blows against the English. Even President
Roosevelt would get involved in saving him from extradition. The movie
would see him return, years later, for a final violent confrontation
with Scaachi. Like George Dyer, this was a fascinating role to play,
further proof that Craig liked to find twisted characters and dig deep
to find their reason and humanity. With very rare exceptions, Craig was now
concentrating on films, and he moved on to the epic I Dreamed Of Africa,
directed by Hugh Hudson. This saw Kim Basinger as an Italian socialite
divorcee persuaded by Vincent Perez to go live in the harsh highlands of
Kenya back in 1972. Once there, she'd discover Perez was far more
interested in hunting trips with his pals than caring for their land, so
she's left to deal with poachers and wild animals, and with the tough
task of impressing Daniel's flinty-eyed Declan Fielding, the manager of
their 100,000 acre ranch. A more comical approach would be taken by
his next venture, Hotel Splendide, which concerned a guest house on a
remote island where weird rules on discipline and health have been
long-enforced by a fierce matriarch, now dead. Everyone on the island,
both family and strange guests, have been brainwashed into thinking that
leaving means death and attempt to continue as normal. But rebellious
son and chef Daniel knows better and, when his ex-girlfriend Toni
Collette arrives, bringing the real world with her, the place falls into
chaos. We see him pass through crazy training
before a combat misadventure that sees him and his men mistakenly hailed
as heroes. Craig was here great again - reserved and troubled at home,
then expansive in war - and the performance would quickly prove to be
one of the most important of his career. He'd make up for this straight away as his role in Sword Of Honour now had its effect. While casting for Road To Perdition, director Sam Mendes had watched the show with playwright Patrick Marber, the latter noting that Craig might be excellent in Mendes' new picture. And so it was that Craig became Connor Rooney, the nutty son of mobster Paul Newman. It would be his actions that drove the
movie forward, first when he commits an unnecessary murder in front of
hitman Tom
Hanks' son, then when he takes it upon himself to wipe out Hanks'
whole family, beginning a cycle of vengeance that destroys the whole
operation. With Hanks taciturn and Newman quietly ruthless, it was left
to Craig, with his psychotic jealousy, to bring passion to a
deliberately dark movie. Consequently his was the stand-out performance.
He was on his way. Daniel would appear in Michael Radford's
segment, Addicted To The Stars, playing a spaceman who returns to Earth
after 80 years, having aged only ten minutes. Next would come
Copenhagen, adapted from Michael Frayn's acclaimed play, where Craig
would play Werner Heisenberg, head of Nazi Germany's atomic energy
programme, on a visit to his mentor, Stephen Rea, in occupied Denmark.
It was fascinating stuff, not only discussing quantum science but
leaving us unsure whether Craig is digging for Allied secrets, trying to
justify his position, or very subtly explaining that he's actually
retarding the Nazis' progress. Daniel's in an unhappy marriage with an autistic son and reacts well to her approaches. They're comfortable with each other, laugh a lot and, despite the 30-year age gap, inevitably enter a sexual relationship, shown graphically. Unfortunately, he's already having an affair with the woman's daughter, who's been expecting him to leave his wife, and now all hell breaks loose as desires and disguises are unflinchingly revealed. In some ways, Craig's next part was equally controversial as he now played the poet Ted Hughes (who he'd seen perform so many years before) in Sylvia, a biopic of Sylvia Plath, many of whose fans still believe that she was driven to suicide by her husband Hughes. Colin Firth had been the original choice, but refused to screen-test. The movie, with Gwyneth Paltrow in the
title role, would follow the couple from their college meeting, over to
Massachusetts and back to England, where Hughes becomes famous (and
unfaithful) and Plath succumbs to mental illness, destroying his office,
burning his papers and eventually putting her head in the oven. Of
course, Paltrow's efforts would be more showy, but Craig's were more
powerful, containing much of Hughes' famed charisma. Fortunately, it possessed none of Lock
Stock's over-stylised slapstick, instead having more in common with
Light Sleeper or American Gigolo. Extra gravitas was brought by Michael
Gambon, one of Craig's co-star in Sylvia who had also, in 2002, played
with Craig downstairs at the Royal Court in Caryl Churchill's A Number,
directed by Stephen Daldry. This had seen Daniel tested in three
separate roles, cloned brothers speaking directly to the audience, who
gradually reveal their different natures - all of it leading to a
horrible revelation. 2005 would bring continued success. First
there'd be a brief spot in Sorstalansag, a historical drama adapted from
Imre Kertesz's Nobel Prize-novel about Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust.
Then would come The Jacket, reuniting him with director John Maybury.
This would see Adrien Brody as an amnesiac Gulf War veteran, placed in a
Vermont asylum, who comes to believe his jacket is a time machine. On
his real or imagined trips he sees the girl of his dreams and the moment
of his death and, back in the real world, attempts to reunite with the
former and avoid the latter. Craig would appear as a fellow inmate. Still, we can expect him to carry on in the same vein, concentrating on indies far more than most actors in his exalted position. "Everybody wants to make a safe bet with roles," he once said "But if you're going to do stuff then you should be getting strong reactions. I don't want audiences to be going 'Yeah, that's alright'." Given his performances in Love Is The Devil, The Mother, Some Voices, Road To Perdition and the rest, you can be sure he'll be garnering strong reactions for years to come. ~ Dominic Wills |
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