Who Is Daniel Craig’s Pick for the Next James Bond?
By Movieguide® Contributor
The whole world is waiting to see who the next James Bond will be; everyone, that is, except former Bond actor Daniel Craig.
“If you were to pass the James Bond torch, who would you love to see play him?” Variety recently asked the actor, who played the iconic British spy from 2006 to 2021.
Craig’s response? “I don’t care.”
The actor’s response might be flippant, but Craig has often spoken about how “incredible” his time as Bond was.
“I had an incredibly fortunate 17 years of my life making this,” he told the BBC in 2022. “I literally want to spend the next 20 years of my life trying to unhook it all and try and put it into a place because it was incredible. I left it where I wanted it to be. And that I was given the chance to do that with the last movie.”
Initially, Craig wasn’t even sure that he would get to play Bond in more than one movie.
“I was driving away from the Berlin premiere of CASINO ROYALE [his first Bond movie] with [producer] Barbara Broccoli,” he told UK’s the Times. “I had genuinely thought I would do one Bond movie, then it would be over. But by then we knew we had a hit on our hands.”
Craig continued, “I realized the enormity of it, so I said to Barbara, ‘How many more? Three? Four?’ She said, ‘Four!’ I said, ‘OK. Then can I kill him off?’ She said, ‘Yes.’”
Craig’s last Bond movie was 2021’s NO TIME TO DIE.
READ MORE: NO TIME TO DIE REVIEW
Craig might not be concerned with the next James Bond, but plenty of others are. Dozens of today’s up-and-coming actors have been floated as possibilities, including Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan and Dev Patel.
Casting director Debbie McWilliams told the Radio Times what the Bond casting process is like, sharing an experience from an earlier Bond change.
“We did look at a lot of younger actors, and I just don’t think they had the gravitas, they didn’t have the experience, they didn’t have the mental capacity to take it on, because it’s not just the part they’re taking on, it’s a massive responsibility,” she explained.
Additionally, many young actors might be hesitant to take on the role as it’s a decade-plus commitment to the franchise.
READ MORE: WHY JAMES BOND PRODUCERS ARE STRUGGLING TO FIND A NEW STAR: ‘IT’S A 10-, 12-YEAR COMMITMENT’
