Daniel Craig reveals why he wouldn’t play ‘Queer’ role during James Bond run: “It would look reactionary”
Daniel Craig has revealed that he would not have taken on his role in Queer during his run as James Bond.
The actor stars in the film as William Lee, an American expat in Mexico City who spends his days and nights cruising gay bars and picking up young men, as well as mingling with other members of a small homosexual expat community. He then begins a love affair with the American student Eugene Allerton.
Queer comes from director Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Call Me By Your Name) and is based on a semi-autobiographical novella by William S. Burroughs. It’s out in cinemas from Friday (December 13).
Craig has given an interview to The Times in which he divulged that he would not have accepted the role while he was playing James Bond, which he did for five films from 2006 to 2021.
“I couldn’t have done this while doing Bond,” he said. “It would look reactionary, like I was showing my range.
He explained that he did not want to show Bond fans a different depiction of masculinity: “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.”
In the same interview, he spoke about feeling free to take on different roles now, something he found more difficult during his 007 tenure. “Early on with Bond I thought I had to do other work, but I didn’t,” he said. “I was becoming a star, whatever that means, and people wanted me in their films. Incredible.”
“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.”
His comments come after he recently said he worried about being typecast while playing Bond. “I was making a pretty good living at the time, so if I’d spent my life doing what I was doing at that time, I would’ve been more than happy,” he said. “But it really was one of those things where — I mean to be typecast as James Bond? Boo-hoo.”
In a four-star review of Queer, NME wrote: “Craig delivers one of his best performances to date as Lee, investing him with a palpable world-weariness and making you feel every moment of hope, desire, ecstasy and crushing disappointment. Starkey is excellent too, generating strong chemistry with Craig, but the supporting cast honours are jointly stolen by a portly Jason Schwartzman (as fellow homosexual expat Joe Guidry) and Britain’s own Leslie Manville, whose make-up job as jungle botanist Dr Cotter has to be seen to be believed.”
The post Daniel Craig reveals why he wouldn’t play ‘Queer’ role during James Bond run: “It would look reactionary” appeared first on NME.
Max Pilley
NME
