Welcome to Daniel Craig’s “F–k It” Era

It’s been a few decades since Daniel Craig first met Luca Guadagnino in Rome, but they only worked together for the first time with the new film Queer , which hit theaters last Friday. He’s known Rian Johnson, director of the Knives Out movies, for about as long, yet the Southern-drawled P.I. Benoit Blanc brought them together professionally just a few years ago. “That’s the way this industry works—you think that it’s snappy, ‘Now, now, now, now,’ but it’s not,” Craig says on this week’s Little Gold Men (listen or read below). “It’s quite tectonic. It gets there eventually.”

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After making his name as a steamy, savvy breakout in British indies like Love Is the Devil and Infamous , Craig spent 15-odd years as one of the world’s biggest movie stars in the far more familiar mold of James Bond. He veered away from the more experimental projects, needing to stay focused on Bond to do him justice, but expected to find his way back to his roots once that part of his life came to a close. Thanks in large part to long-gestating relationships with the likes of Johnson and Guadagnino, he very much has.

This goes especially for Queer , in which Craig gives perhaps his finest screen turn to date—a mad, somewhat surreal torrent of lust and isolation. He plays William Lee, a wanderer in ‘50s Mexico City whose infatuation with a younger man ( Drew Starkey ) sets the stage for a sad, sexy, strange love story as only Guadagnino could pull off. The film is loosely adapted from the semi-autobiographical novel by William S. Burroughs, but the book’s irascible portrait of Lee has been softened by Craig, who imbues the mysterious loner with a scraggly, wounded heart.

“It’s a story about love, and that’s the movie we wanted to make,” Craig says. “We wanted to make it as emotional as possible. That was the starting point.” Fittingly, that’s where we started too.

Vanity Fair: Do you consider yourself an emotional actor?

Daniel Craig: I think I’m quite an emotional human being. It’s the only thing I’m interested in: the emotional journey of the characters I play. What they are, and who they are, is kind of secondary to that.

One reason I ask is the way your performance has been covered and praised thus far, as a very different kind of role for you—at least of stuff you’ve been able to do lately. Did it feel that way to you?

The honest truth is, I wouldn’t have tackled this a few years ago, because it would have felt very self-conscious to do a “I’ve got to counteract what I’m doing in one world, and make sure people understand that I’m an actor with range.” I stopped doing that quite early on with the James Bond movies because I found, A, I didn’t have the energy to do films between doing James Bond movies, and B, because I couldn’t give them enough energy. I think it’s dangerous to be reactive. You can’t do a job, and then go, “I must do this now, to counteract the feeling of that.” That’s a fool’s errand. But this came along at a time in my life when I was, I suppose, hoping something like this would come along.

You’ve mentioned feeling an innate understanding of Lee when you first read the Queer script. Could you say a little bit more about that?

Well, it’s a complicated part, to say the least, but I really felt it was in my wheelhouse—that I could learn to understand who this person was, and wanted to, and was really, really interested. It’s someone who’s really lonely, really looking—and really searching and searching for love, for companionship, for someone in their life that they can share their life with. I can get in touch with that. And added to that, all the extras: these men in exile, because what they were was illegal. I mean, being homosexual, or being a junkie was illegal.

It’s very, very true to the story, apart from the tail end, which Luca felt incredibly strongly that we needed to show: that this sort of weird, one-sided relationship—or what appeared to be a weird, one-sided relationship—actually comes to a point where we realize, “Oh my God, they’re compatible, they’re together. They’re really here, and they’re inside each other, literally and figuratively.” And yet, they can’t be.

You were involved in Queer from all sides, right? I was speaking with the film’s costume designer, Jonathan Anderson, and he mentioned your particular interest in the history of menswear during that era.

I’ve always had a kind of bit of a fascination about it. My grandpa was a tailor, and I grew up at a time where my mom made dresses—I mean, you had to, because people didn’t have money. Certainly, my grandparents didn’t, because of the war, and the rationing of things. My grandfather made suits for people at a time when people bought a suit a month. My father used to talk about it as a joke: You go out and you buy a suit on a Thursday night, and it would be in pieces and covered in blood on Sunday morning. Then you’d buy another one—that’s how they wore clothes.

I was always fascinated by tailoring. I’m not so into fashion, but I really appreciate the skill of great designers, and people like Jonathan. I saw his show in Paris just recently, and it’s just so intricate and complicated and beautiful. And clothing, of course, is very important in Bond, the suits he wears—and therefore, I was allowed a lot of input into that and about the way they looked. Jonathan who came along [on Queer ] and said, “The only way to do this is to be original.” These are original Brook Brothers suits [from the 1950s] that I’m wearing, and there’s one of each. I understood, as soon as he said it to me, “You can’t recreate that.” You can make a suit that looks like it, but it won’t hang like that because it doesn’t have the history of, let’s be honest, sweat and body secretions and all of that. Those suits did have that in them, and that’s what they look like onscreen. They look like they’ve been worn, and they have history.

You’re speaking to the whole, detailed world that Luca creates here. There’s so much to bask in, in terms of the research and the set design, but also the emotional texture. Does all that material make it easier or more difficult to disappear into the world and the character?

Well, I think that’s the trick, isn’t it? [ Laughs ] I’s the kind of: The swan looks beautiful on top, but it’s all fucking happening underneath. Luca is a master at what he does, and when it boils down to it, you are there on set, and the scene’s being shot, and it’s about the scene that’s being shot, and what that truth of that moment is, and what you’re trying to convey. Is it as good as it can be? Are you serving the story? Have you discovered something new? Are you allowing yourself to discover something new? Are we all being good enough?

I’m constantly going, “Did we get that? Do we need to do more?” You’re questioning, always, every day. What I really learned on this—and what I’m really kind of grateful to Luca for—is I’m quite stiff. I’m an English guy. I work really hard at trying to free that up, because it’s important as an actor to be open to as much as you possibly can, especially on the set, and with other actors, to go, “Oh, wow, they’re doing that. I didn’t realize the scene could go that way. I’m not going to block that.” He really just helped me with that immensely, to be free to the unknown and the “fuck it” of it all. It’s like, “I don’t know, fuck it. Let’s see what happens.”

James Bond is a very stoic character. Did that feel like a kind of comfort zone for you?

Is Bond a comfort zone? Is it my safe space? [ Laughs ]

Or did it become that, maybe.

There were restrictions to it. There are rules that you have to apply to it, because I’m playing a character that’s supposed to have consistency—an emotionally crippled kind of killer. I wanted to get into the fact that ultimately, a human being is underneath there, what I thought was the interesting part of it. Whether other people thought it was interesting, who knows.

Benoit Blanc fits within an established genre framework, too, but plays as more comic. I enjoy watching you push up against that. Do you consider yourself a funny actor?

Maybe to myself. [ Laughs ] I mean, what is funny? It’s really a hard one. I’m not a comedian, and I am in awe of comedians, of people who have the quick wit, the improvisational skills. I need a script. If the script is funny and good, then you’ll expand on it as you do it, because it’s possible to improvise on. When there’s no script, and someone is like, “Okay, let’s improvise,” I’m like, “I just don’t have that skill set, I can’t do it.” With Rian [Johnson], you’re provided with a brilliant, funny script, and there are lots of improvised lines in all three movies now.

With somebody like Rian, you guys are talking pretty frequently between Knives Out films, if I have that right?

Oh yes.

These relationships that you’ve developed with filmmakers, even talking about Luca and how long you’d known him before making Queer , how important are they in thinking about the kind of work you want to do from one project to the next?

I feel I’ve just been doing it long enough that they finally have to get around and employ me, because nobody else will. [ Laughs ] There really is no game plan. I loved meeting Rian years ago. We’d bump into each other, and I remember going to talk to him when he started Star Wars , and it was a vague conversation about maybe doing something, and I’m always like, “No pressure. No pressure. I’d love to work with you, but we don’t have to make it happen.” I know how these things work, and Rian’s an artist, Luca’s an artist. I know what artists are like. They’re a nightmare. But you’ve got to allow for it to come to them. You can’t say, “I’m going to be in your movie.”

Do you think about developing stuff on your own?

No. [ Pause ]

No?

No. I’ve tried, but I like acting. It’s all too much hard work. I like working on scripts. We attempted to adapt Purity , [Jonathan] Franzen ’s book, with Jonathan and Todd Field. That process was extraordinary, and it was so creatively rewarding, and it didn’t happen. It’s one of those things, as many, many things are, where the tectonic plates didn’t join up for that one. I did enjoy that, but as an actor, I get to go home at night and switch off. And if you’re a director or a producer, that phone doesn’t stop ringing. Someone’s just going, “What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?” And you’re like, “Go away.”

Your relationships with Luca and Rian predated Bond. Coming out of Bond, though, have you found yourself seen a certain way as an actor in the industry? Is it limiting?

I try not to think about how I’m seen in the industry. I went into Bond knowing that it would do something to me as an actor and how people see me. And I think people will struggle here. They’ll look at this movie and go, “What the—what is this?” But there’s nothing I can do about that. There’s nothing I can do about people not wanting me to be Bond. I kind of just go, “Well, I’ve got to get on with my job. If you like it, great. If you don’t like it, watch something else.” I can’t be in control of people’s perceptions. Of course, I’m an actor. I want people to love me! But you’d go fucking nuts, if you kind of—like, I knew what I was before I started doing Bond, and I think I know what I am after doing Bond.

In Queer , you go to some pretty devastating places onscreen. How do you find accessing that emotion?

The gung-ho response to that is: That’s your bread and butter. It’s why you became an actor. But it does get you. I’m not like a method actor—I mean, I am in character, but I’m not. I’m available, and not like, “You’re going to have to call me Bill .” Not that that’s not brilliant—I’m in awe of people to do that—but that’s not the way I work. But yeah, you’re affected. It gets you emotionally. At the end of a job, everybody gets sick; the adrenals just blow up and everybody gets the flu. It’s not just the emotional scenes you’re doing. It’s the intensity of the conversation, of where you are. I always laugh about it: When you’re making a movie, it is the most important thing on earth. There is nothing else that matters. You’ve got to watch that a bit. Of course it’s important, but also, it’s acting, dressing up, and showing off.

I would think it’s easier to remind yourself of that as you get deeper into your career, too.

Maybe. I’ve always been a little bit like that. I’ve always had a third eye for that, I think, just to make sure. I do think that’s where bullshit lies, as well—a lot of bullshit. And that’s, let’s be honest, the enemy of acting, or the enemy of good acting, anyway.

Did you surprise yourself at all in Queer ?

Yeah, I just let go a bit. I let go. It’s an Italian set, and it’s a particular thing in Italian sets. I’ve worked in Italy lots of times, but usually with British crews and things, so it’s still a British film. Italian sets are just, there’s people on set. “Who are these people?” “No idea.” They just guess. “Hello! Hi! Ciao!” You just have to let go. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. This story really kind of summed it up for me. It was only a couple of days into shooting, and Drew’s driver, this young kid, came up to me and went, “The script is amazing.” I was like, “Who gave you the fucking script?” On an English set or an American movie, nobody would get the script. We’d lock-box! But Luca’s like, “Read it! Tell me what you think!”

With your most famous roles, Bond or even something like a Knives Out sequel, those things are under lock and key—they kind of have to be.

They kind of have to be. But there is also, again, going back to that: “This is the most important thing in the world” thing. Like, come on, let’s get some reality into this. I don’t want the script to be out there. The last thing on Earth I want this to do is the script to be out. For Knives Out 3 , there are people looking for that script—just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you. With Bond, there was a script leaked.

I remember that.

It wasn’t the script we shot, but it was definitely a script that had lots of ideas in what we shot. It’s like, “Oh, come on.” Again, “the most important thing in the world,” but so many people were working so hard to put that out, to get it out. It was a particularly weird thing to do: Like, somebody wants to ruin it for everybody.

With the timing of Queer , your career has been talked about holistically a lot lately. Have you picked up on that?

It’s very, very nice…. It’s terrifying, and very humbling, and all of those things. They’re going to look back at my movies, and I suppose I’m going to have to say something fairly intelligent about it. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’ll give it a go.

The filmmakers you’ve worked with, it’s such an incredible group. Who have you learned the most from?

All of them. All of the experiences. Even some of the stuff I did really early on, with directors who you wouldn’t know—you learn maybe how not to do it, that’s just as important. But working with Sam Mendes on Road to Perdition , watching Paul Newman work and how he worked. Realizing that there’s this actor in front of me who’s struggling with the same things I’m struggling with. Paul did this scene, and it was like three o’clock in the morning, and it was one of those [days] where we’d been at it all day, and he was supposed to slam the table. Because he’s a minx, Sam went up to Paul Newman and went, “That’s great, that’s great. Do it better,” and walked off. I saw that and I saw Paul Newman’s face. He was like, “Fuck you.”