Daniel Craig has opened up about his “traumatic” experience of filming James Bond with a broken leg.
The actor injured himself while filming the last Bond film, Spectre. He was meant to have an operation on his leg, but pushed it back so as to not interrupt the filming schedule.
Appearing on ITV’s Being James Bond documentary, which aired on Sunday (26 September) night, Craig discussed the pain of filming following his accident.
“I had a lot of fun on [Spectre] but part of the problem was that I broke my leg,” he said.
“We had a choice. We could shut down for nine months and I could go and get an operation, or I could crack on with the movie and I didn’t want to shut down for nine months.”
Explaining how he wore a bionic leg but kept doing his own stunts for the rest of the filming process, Craig said that he found the experience to be “massively distracting” and “traumatic”.
“I had to psychologically juggle my physical state,” he said, adding that the leg would sometimes “give way” because of his injury.
“At the beginning of the movie, I climb out of a window and walk down a ledge… I am literally going, ‘Don’t give way, don’t give way’,” he recalled.
“I have a wire on, but it’s very traumatic. I am trying to be cool but my leg is shot.”
Bond producer Barbara Broccoli added that Craig could “barely walk” due to his “excruciating pain” and said that she did not know how he managed to continue filming.
Last year, Craig said that the accident had played into his decision not to continue playing the secret agent beyond No Time To Die, which is released on Thursday (30 September).
“I had to question myself, was I physically capable of doing [another one] or did I want to do another one? Because that phone call to your wife saying, ‘I’ve broken my leg’ is not pleasant,” he said.
Craig married fellow actor Rachel Weisz in 2011.
No Time To Die is released on Thursday 30 September
