Daniel Craig has revealed he was fully prepared to quit the role of James Bond if Casino Royale was a failure.
Speaking at a career retrospective in New York (via IndieWire), Craig said that the 2006 film, which introduced him as 007, could have easily been his only shot at the character.
“I knew we had a good movie when we were making it,” he said. “But I squared it away with myself that if it was a swing and a miss, it was a swing and a miss.
“I could just do one movie and then move on.”
Craig also revealed that he was only interested in playing 007 if the traditional Bond women “meant something” in comparison to past instalments of the franchise.
“I wanted the characters who were women to mean something,” he said. “It was very important to lift what they had been. I hope we’ve done that in these five movies.”
He continued, “So that means sex isn’t always the endgame. It’s part of it. Sex and death are always closely related in these stories, going back to the original books, where everyone’s a bit turned on doing all this stuff. That wasn’t the go-to.
“I wanted a twist to it: he falls in love, he’s heartbroken, he’s actually pushing someone away. It had to have meaning.”
The Q&A session occurred hours before it was announced that the release of No Time to Die, Craig’s final Bond movie, had been pushed to November over fears of the coronavirus.
Cinemas in China and Italy, two major markets for the film, have been forced to close due to the outbreak.
