Crave Online: First of all, I want to thank you for being awesome.

Daniel Craig: All right, thank you. It's my pleasure.

Crave Online: How much fun are you having as Bond?

Daniel Craig: I mean, it's fantastic. These movies are an amazing experience to shoot and they're an amazing experience to work with the people I work with. Marc Forster on this has been a joy to work with. I'm a big fan of his movies so I'd love to have worked with him on any other movie. The whole collaborative effort of making a movie like this, it's a big deal. It's a really, really big deal. There were 1000 people who worked on this movie. At any one time, I'll be working with 200-300 people. We shot this for six months. It's a long time since I've been on a movie set on the last day of shooting where the first AD goes, "Okay, everyone, ladies and gentleman, that's a wrap." And everybody looked around at each other and just went, "Okay, we've done something here." It was a huge thing and I think it's on the screen. I think it's up there.

Crave Online: Were you relieved that Casino Royale turned out so well?

Daniel Craig: Of course I was. I was amazed, stunned that it did so well, absolutely stunned.

Crave Online: If Casino Royale hadn't been so good, would you have been more nervous coming back?

Daniel Craig: Yes. Definitely.

Crave Online: Your Bond is the first one we've seen this vulnerable, even with On Her Majesty's. Where else can this go?

Daniel Craig: I think we've finished, we've tail ended these. These movies stand up alone. They're two very separate movies, two stylistically separate movies but we've completed the circle in these movies. We can do anything.

Crave Online: How do you like your Bond girls this time?

Daniel Craig: Olga's character I just think is, there's strength in it. She’s fantastic. She’s done a great job. She was thrown in the deep end with this and the part was about somebody on a vendetta, somebody with a deep past and they come together. They’re a foil for each other in this because Bond actually isn’t on a vendetta. He’s trying to come to terms with losing the love of his life and kill the bad guys which obviously goes without saying. Gemma's character, Fields, is so great because they get together and it's lovely and it's a bit of fun and [then] it's not.

Crave Online: Judi Dench counts too.

Daniel Craig: It’s a great thing to have because he can behave like a misogynist, behave badly, he does the things he shouldn’t do, he’s amoral or morally ambiguous and M is the grounding. She makes it make sense. Very lovely. Every time we do a scene together it's easy. She just makes my job easy because I have total confidence in her.

Crave Online: Did she ad lib?

Daniel Craig: She messed around a bit. She did, I think she messed around. I don't think she ad libbed that much but she did mess around a bit.

Crave Online: Did you know Judi Dench before these films?

 

Daniel Craig: Briefly. Just to bow to. She’s immense.

Crave Online: Have you and the producers and director thought about where you want him to go from here?

Daniel Craig:  No. We’ve got so much on our plate just trying to get one movie out. We’ve had discussions but there’s never any [certainty]. Again, whether Paul Haggis does the next one or whether we’ll get another writer involved, we want their creative input. And to say, "This is what we want," it puts up barriers, it puts up walls. You want someone with creativity and talent to come in and go, "I’ve got a good idea."

Crave Online: You could continue on with the Quantum idea.

Daniel Craig: We could do. I think that there’s definitely room. It could take it right up into governments. We could take it anywhere.

Crave Online: You could sleep with more women.

 

Daniel Craig: I could do, yeah.

Crave Online: Is the downside that you have to prove every time it’s going to be a better movie?

Daniel Craig: It’s a high class problem, to be honest. I think as long as we’re keeping the product good, it’s horrible to say that word but let’s be honest, that’s what it is, keeping the quality up, keeping the money on the screen, keeping audiences interested. I can’t predict what’s going to happen so if we’re fighting an uphill battle then it’s time to rethink, but that’s a challenge and I think it’s a good challenge.

Crave Online: Since Casino Royale had Bond's first gun barrel shot, this was the first time you walked across the screen. How did it feel to take that historic walk?

Daniel Craig: Probably that was the scariest bit, if I was to be totally honest. It’s not the jumping off buildings and the fires and all that. That was probably the scariest bit. We did it twice. We did it once and it didn’t work so we did it twice and I thought, "It has to be right and it has to be aggressive and it has to work."

Crave Online: Quantum ties up a lot of loose ends from Casino Royale, but not all of them. Is that ambiguity important to continue too?

Daniel Craig: I just think what we’ve got to keep doing is inventing new questions. There are strict guidelines within a Bond movie that you have to adhere to because it’s a Bond movie and within the parameters of that you mess it up, you muck it about. That being the challenge of this, it’s been the exciting thing about doing the film because it's a really good place to start. The books were great and Sean Connery set the movies up and has probably given it the impetus it needed to last so long. The Broccoli and Saltzman partnership put the money on the screen. They genuinely did and put Bond on location and make them stylish and it has given the impetus that has lasted this long and they love these movies. They love this franchise and they protect it fiercely and it’s an unusual situation but it’s a very exciting situation as far as filmmaking is concerned.

Crave Online: Is this your favorite role to date?

Daniel Craig: To date? I enjoyed it but I don’t look back like that. I don’t look back. I really genuinely don’t but I’m very proud of a lot of the work I’ve done. Genuinely very proud of it and I look at movies and have been very lucky to work with great directors, great actors.

Crave Online: You were the new guy with Martin Campbell last time. This time Marc Forster was the new guy with you. How did that work?

Daniel Craig: He’s a good director. I spoke to him yesterday, I couldn’t warn him about how long this could take and when you’re three months into it and you’ve got another three months to go you can’t warn somebody about that because you’ve got to experience it for yourself. He’s an incredibly active director. He is involved at every level. He plans meticulously, he covers every base and we did our work before we started. Once we wound it up and let it go, we’d come on set and we’d talk but we made most of the plans about what we wanted to do before we started shooting and that was a relief because it meant we could concentrate on what we’re doing and he’s a lovely man and I count him as a friend.

Crave Online: What did you think watching the film for the first time?

Daniel Craig: I’ve seen it about 10 times in every stage from a rough cut with no music or sound, well, sound but rough sound, and then with a temp score and then some sound and special effects. I saw it about two weeks ago and I think Marc has done an amazing job. It’s quick, it’s fast, it answers the questions, it’s emotional in the right place, the action works, the special effects don’t impose. I was relieved. It’s always a relief.

Crave Online: What did you think of your performance?

 

Daniel Craig: Don’t ask me about that.

Crave Online: Defiance is getting a lot of buzz. Are you excited about that?

Daniel Craig: I am. I’m very pleased it’s come out really well and Eduardo Serra who shot it has done a beautiful job and is, I think, emotional. It deals with very important subject matters and a really good story that needs telling.

Crave Online: What's it about and who do you play?

Daniel Craig: It's a great story. Ed Zwick sent it to me and I hadn't heard about this story. It was Jewish resistance that happened in Belarussia in the second World War. It's a story about many things but it's a story about survival and a story about building peace in society, putting everything back on its feet and it fit in. I wanted to work with Ed for a while. His character is very reluctant to get involved but he’s forced to.

Crave Online: Do you speak Spanish?

Daniel Craig: I speak 25 words really badly. I must get better because I want to get back to South America as soon as I can and I know it would improve my time there immensely.

Crave Online: Was this shot in South America?

 

Crave Online: What are you shooting next?

Daniel Craig: Nothing at all. I’m just taking it easy for the moment.

Crave Online: Is there a character you’d like to do but haven’t had a chance yet?

Daniel Craig: I haven’t found it yet but there’s probably something out there. When you see good writing, when you see good scripts, it’s actually a surprise because someone’s created something and moves you. And if it moves me that’s why I do it.

Crave Online: Are you under contract for another Bond?

 

Daniel Craig: For four. This is the second one, so…

Crave Online: As an Academy voter, have you seen anything you recommend?

Daniel Craig: I am. Sadly, I haven't seen a thing. I'm about to go and sit down and watch, as soon as this is all over, I'm going to sit in a room and watch a ton of movies. I've seen The Wrestler. It's great. I love it. Whether it's an Oscar performance, I couldn't tell you.