Daniel Craig

Daniel Wroughton Craig ( CRAYG; born 2 March 1968) is an English actor. He gained international fame by playing the fictional secret agent James Bond in the films Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015), and No Time to Die (2021).

After training at the National Youth Theatre in London and graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1991, Craig began his career on stage. He began acting with the drama The Power of One (1992), and had his breakthrough role in the drama serial Our Friends in the North (1996). He gained prominence for his supporting roles in films such as Elizabeth (1998), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Road to Perdition (2002), Layer Cake (2004), and Munich (2005).

In 2006, Craig played Bond in Casino Royale, a reboot of the Bond franchise that was favourably received by critics and for which Craig was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Since then he has acted in many films, including the fantasy The Golden Compass (2007), the drama Defiance (2008), the science fiction Western Cowboys & Aliens (2011), the mystery thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and the heist film Logan Lucky (2017). He has also played Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out film series since 2019, and starred in the romantic drama Queer (2024), for which he was nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globe Awards, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards.

On stage, Craig starred in the Royal National Theatre's production of Angels in America (1993) on the West End. He made his Broadway debut in the play A Steady Rain (2009) and returned to Broadway in the revivals of Harold Pinter's Betrayal (2011) and William Shakespeare's Macbeth (2022). He starred as Iago in the New York Theatre Workshop production of Othello (2016).

Early life and education

Daniel Wroughton Craig was born on 2 March 1968 in Chester, Cheshire, to an art teacher, Carol Olivia (née Williams), and Timothy John Wroughton Craig, a midshipman in the Merchant Navy and steel erector. His father later became the landlord of two Cheshire pubs: The Ring o' Bells in Frodsham and The Boot Inn in Tarporley. Craig has an older sister named Lea (born 1965), and a younger half-brother named Harry (1991). He is of part Welsh and distant French descent, counting the French Huguenot minister Daniel Chamier and Sir William Burnaby, 1st Baronet, among his ancestors. His middle name, Wroughton, comes from his great-great-grandmother, Grace Matilda Wroughton.

When Craig's parents divorced in 1972, he and his sister moved to the Wirral Peninsula with their mother, where he attended primary school in Hoylake as well as school in Frodsham. He attended Hilbre High School in West Kirby. Upon leaving at the age of 16, he attended Calday Grange Grammar School as a sixth form student. He played rugby union for Hoylake RFC.

Craig began acting in school plays at the age of six, making his debut in the Frodsham Primary School production of Oliver! He became interested in serious acting by attending Liverpool's Everyman Theatre with his mother. At the age of 14 in 1982, he played roles in Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella at Hilbre High School. In 1984, he was accepted into the National Youth Theatre and moved to London, where he worked part-time in restaurants to finance his education. His parents watched his stage debut as Agamemnon in Troilus And Cressida. He performed with the National Youth Theatre on tours to Valencia and Moscow under the leadership of director Edward Wilson. He entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1988, and graduated in 1991 after a three-year course under the tutelage of Colin McCormack, an actor from the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Career

1992–2005: Early roles and breakthrough

Craig appeared in his first screen role in 1992, playing an Afrikaner in The Power of One. Having played minor roles in the miniseries Anglo-Saxon Attitudes and the shows Covington Cross and Boon, he appeared in November 1993 as Joe in the Royal National Theatre's production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America. Also in 1993, Craig was featured in two episodes of the American television shows Zorro and George Lucas's The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and British shows Heartbeat, in which he played Peter Begg; Between the Lines; Drop the Dead Donkey and Sharpe's Eagle. In 1994, Craig appeared in The Rover, a filmed stage production and Les Grandes Horizontales, a stage production at the National Theatre Studio, where he first met Rachel Weisz, who would become his second wife. Craig was featured in the poorly received Disney film A Kid in King Arthur's Court (1995). In 1996, Craig starred in the BBC drama serial Our Friends in the North as the troubled George 'Geordie' Peacock. Appearing alongside Christopher Eccleston, Gina McKee and Mark Strong, Craig's part in the series is considered his breakthrough role.

In the same year, Craig guest-starred in an episode of the HBO horror anthology series Tales from the Crypt and was featured in the BBC television film Saint-Ex. Craig gave a lead performance in the Franco-German drama Obsession in 1997, about a love triangle between Craig's character and a couple. The same year, he played a leading role in Hurlyburly, a play performed in the West End at the Old Vic.

Craig appeared in three films in 1998: the independent drama Love and Rage, the biographical drama Elizabeth, in which he played Jesuit priest John Ballard, who was executed for being involved in the Babington Plot, an attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England, and the BBC television film Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), in which Craig played small-time thief George Dyer who becomes the lover and muse of painter Francis Bacon, who was portrayed by Derek Jacobi. The following year, Craig starred in a television drama called Shockers: The Visitor and as Sergeant Telford Winter in the independent war film The Trench, which takes place in the confines of the trenches in the First World War during the 48 hours leading up to the Battle of the Somme.

Craig played a schizophrenic man who falls in love with a woman (played by Kelly Macdonald) after being discharged from psychiatric hospital in the drama Some Voices (2000). Also in 2000, Craig co-starred alongside Toni Collette in the dark comedy Hotel Splendide and was featured in I Dreamed of Africa, based on the life of Kuki Gallmann (played by Kim Basinger). Craig played the love interest of Angelina Jolie's character Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), based on the video game series Tomb Raider. He later admitted to having taken on the role in the poorly-reviewed yet commercially successful film only for the money. In 2001, Craig also starred in the four-part Channel 4 drama Sword of Honour, based on the trilogy of novels of the same. Craig appeared in the anthology film Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (2002), starring in the segment "Addicted to the Stars", directed by Michael Radford.

His second release of 2002 was Sam Mendes' crime film Road to Perdition with Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, in which he played Irish mobster Connor Rooney, the son of the crime organisation's boss. Craig then portrayed German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg in the BBC television drama Copenhagen (2002), which depicts Heisenberg's involvement in the German nuclear weapon project during World War II. On stage, Craig starred opposite Michael Gambon in the original production of Caryl Churchill's play A Number from September to November 2002 at the Royal Court Theatre. Craig was nominated for a London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor for his role as a man who is cloned twice by his father. The next year, he starred as poet Ted Hughes opposite Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath in the biographical film Sylvia (2003), which depicts the romance between the two poets. In the same year, he appeared in The Mother as a man who engages in an affair with the much older mother (played by Anne Reid) of his lover and best friend.

The crime thriller Layer Cake, directed by Matthew Vaughn, starred Craig as an unnamed London-based cocaine supplier known only as "XXXX" in the film's credits. Kevin Crust, writing for the Los Angeles Times, praised Craig's "stunningly suave performance", while Roger Ebert thought he was "fascinating" in the film. Craig next starred as a man who is stalked by a stranger (played by Rhys Ifans) after they witness a deadly accident together in Enduring Love (2004).