Action never stops for Daniel Craig
“To tell a story is our business, and this is a cracking story to tell.” — Dame Judi Dench (M) on Quantum of Solace.
The really good news about Daniel Craig is that he’s still Daniel Craig — this despite having a veritable tidal wave known as James Bond crash over his life.
A few years into his reign as the iconic secret agent and back to promote Quantum of Solace, the actor, 40, seems as energetic and enthusiastic as ever.
This newest Bond film opens in theatres Friday and with 12:01 a.m. screenings in most cities across Canada.
Craig is seemingly oblivious to his new global celebrity and as unfazed as ever by his own success.
Not that it’s been easy being James Bond.
“It was very nuts,” he jokes about the furor over Casino Royale in 2006. “But then, I had no benchmark for that. I’d been in movies that I’d considered successful, and also that were critically successful, but the idea of box office was anathema to me.”
That’s changed somewhat. He says, “I think, a little learning is a dangerous thing, because coming to Quantum of Solace, it’s like, ‘We’ve got to make this much money, we’ve got to do this,’ and I try not to think about it. I try to keep it out of the equation. I let other people worry about it,” he says, and then smiling, he adds, “and they do.”
They must be worried a little less by now. Quantum of Solace has already opened in England, where it shattered all previous box-office records for opening weekends, including that set by Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire. And by Casino Royale.
Quantum of Solace is the first-ever direct sequel in the franchise, and takes Bond all over the globe in his quest to avenge the death of Vesper and reveal the inner workings of the criminal organization, Quantum.
The action begins about an hour after Casino Royale ends — but this is a more cold and brooding James Bond than ever. Quantum of Solace is actually more frantic, if you can image, than Casino Royale, with stupendous action involving car chases, boat chases, an impossible foot chase across the rooftops of Siena, Italy, off-hand leaping out of airplanes and feats of derring-do in the midst of an inferno. It never stops.
Bond’s female sidekick is Camille (Olga Kurylenko), a woman also out for revenge; the main villain is played by Mathieu Almaric, who is the oily Dominic Greene, a man intent upon cornering the market in certain natural resources. He holds whole countries for ransom.
Quantum of Solace involves more filming locations than any other movie in the franchise, with Bond vs. the baddies in Panama, Chile, Mexico, Italy, Austria and the UK. The jewel in the crown in this chapter is shoot-out at the Bergenz opera house, where all hell breaks loose in the middle of a performance of Tosca.
Talk about breathtaking.
Craig does as much of his own stunt work as he can, and that shows up loud and clear in Quantum of Solace. Second unit director Dan Bradley has talked about Craig’s fantastic work ethic, and how he willingly undertook leaps across streets and alleyways from four and five storey rooftops. “He even jumped out a window and dropped 20 feet toward the roof of a speeding bus,” said Bradley.
Craig has a distinct philosophy about all of this — he just wants it to look real.
“It sounds (conceited) of me, to sort of compare the two, but there’s a tradition in cinema that goes way back to Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and even earlier when they said, ‘Can you ride a horse? Then you’ve got the part.’ The thing of it is, when Buster Keaton is standing there and the house falls down, it’s him. There’s no special effects and there’s no CGI and they didn’t do any jump cutting and we can see it all. And I just love that.”
When he’s not working, Craig stays busy with, um — well, we really couldn’t say what he does on his own time. He lives with American producer Satsuki Mitchell, dated Sienna Miller and Kate Moss in the past and has a daughter of 16 from his first marriage to actress Fiona Loudon. The actor has protected himself and his private life as much possible, saying, “I fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. And it’s not even so much to protect myself. It’s to protect my family. Their normality of life, or the way they treat me, is precious to me, and changing that, some of it becoming public knowledge — if you’re talking about someone’s personal life, who isn’t involved with a public life, it’s really hurtful.”
He adds, “If I’ve invited OK! magazine or Hello into my house and I say, ‘This is my curtains, this is my bed,’ I can’t really complain, can I? But I try to stay solid. And have a precedent.”
The one area of his life that’s an open book is his career. Craig always wanted to be an actor, from childhood onward. “I grew up in and around Liverpool in the last depression. I left school at 16, 17. I considered joining the Navy, I was a waiter, but beyond that, I’d always wanted to be an actor and my mother, thankfully, gave me just that gentle nudge. Which was just, ‘Go do it,’ and how she dealt with that, I don’t know. She’s a good woman. That encouragement was enough, that’s all I needed.” Having just sworn not to talk about his personal life, Craig looks a bit pained at himself for talking about his mother. “I gave it my best shot,” he continues. “It took a while, but there it was. There was a safety net to fall back on, the family is there, the solidity, and you feel you can do anything. And at 17 or 18, you feel you can do anything anyway,” he says, laughing.
He went to London to join the National Youth Theatre at 16. Craig graduated from the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1991. He then won a role in the 1992 South African boxing drama, The Power of One — which he calls his first paying job. He was 21, and he has worked steadily since in theatre, TV and such films as Layer Cake, The Mother, Enduring Love, Infamous, Sylvia, The Trench, The Jacket, Road To Perdition, Love Is The Devil, Munich, His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass and of course, Casino Royale. He will be seen in December in Defiance, playing one of a trio of Polish brothers who elude the Nazis during the Second World War.
And what was it about acting that was such a huge magnet for him when he was young?
“Dressing up and showing off,” says Craig. “Still is."
"Madagascar" roars with $63.5 million weekend
LOS ANGELES – Families herded into movie theaters for another trek with stranded zoo animals as the animated sequel "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" led the weekend with a $63.5 million debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The haul for the DreamWorks Animation comedy far surpassed the $47.2 million debut for "Madagascar" over Memorial Day weekend in 2005. Its three-day total also beat the $61 million gross the first movie took in over that full four-day holiday weekend.
"It just shows people seem happy to escape to the movies and have a good laugh," said Anne Globe, head of marketing for DreamWorks Animation.
While parents with children were the bulk of the audience, "Madagascar" also drew teens and adults on their own, who made up half the audience on Friday and one-third on Saturday, Globe said.
Premiering in second place with $19.3 million was the Universal Pictures comedy "Role Models," starring Seann William Scott and Paul Rudd as immature adults sentenced to community service as mentors for two misfit youths.
The weekend's other new wide release, the Weinstein Co. music comedy "Soul Men," opened weakly with $5.6 million, despite the lure of Samuel L. Jackson and his late co-stars, Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes, who died last summer. Jackson and Mac play an estranged singing team on a reunion road trip to a memorial concert.
Mac also was among the voice cast for the "Madagascar" sequel, providing vocals as Zuba, the father of Ben Stiller's Alex the lion.
"Certainly, he just brought a wonderful heart to the role of Zuba. We were just fortunate to have him for that character," Globe said.
The movie also reunites voice stars Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith and Sacha Baron Cohen as the animal gang crash lands in an African nature preserve.
Disney's "High School Musical 3: Senior Year," which had been No. 1 the previous two weekends, slipped to third place with $9.3 million, raising its total to $75.7 million.
"Madagascar" and "Role Models" kicked off a big start to Hollywood's holiday season. The top 12 movies took in $128.8 million, up 32 percent from the same weekend last year.
"It's all boding well," said Nikki Rocco, head of distribution for Universal. "We have lots of really good films coming, lots of commercial films. I love the fact that everybody's going to the movies. I love the fact that everybody likes what they're seeing."
The season continues with Sony's James Bond adventure "Quantum of Solace" on Friday, then Summit Entertainment's vampire romance "Twilight" and Disney's animated canine comedy "Bolt" on Nov. 21.
"Quantum of Solace" continued to pull in big audiences overseas with $106.5 million in 60 countries, raising its total to $160.3 million since it began opening internationally Oct. 31.
Hollywood's domestic revenue for the year stands at $7.96 billion, a fraction ahead of the pace in 2007, when the industry took in a record $9.7 billion, according to box-office tracker Media By Numbers.
Factoring in inflation, the number of tickets sold this year trails last year's admissions by 4 percent. But Hollywood has a stronger lineup this time heading into Thanksgiving, so studios could finish the year with a bang.
"Given where we are and the films in the pipeline, we have a huge shot at more than making up for any kind of attendance deficit," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers. "You wouldn't know there was a recession if you were just looking at the movie industry."
Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa," $63.5 million.
2. "Role Models," $19.3 million.
3. "High School Musical 3: Senior Year," $9.3 million.
4. "Changeling," $7.3 million.
5. "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," $6.5 million.
6. "Soul Men," $5.6 million.
7. "Saw V," $4.2 million.
8. "The Haunting of Molly Hartley," $3.5 million.
9. "The Secret Life of Bees," $3.1 million.
10. "Eagle Eye," $2.6 million.