Daniel Craig Explains Why He Wouldn’t Play Gay Role During James Bond Run
Daniel Craig’s new film seems him take the role of gay William Lee in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, based on a semi-autobiographical novella by William S Burroughs, but the former James Bond star has shared he would never have considered taking the role during his time at the helm of the 007 franchise.
He told The Times of London: “I couldn’t have done this while doing Bond. It would look reactionary, like I was showing my range,” and he said he wasn’t interested in the prospect of taking fans of Bond through to a different depiction of masculinity: “It’s just not a conversation I wanted.
I had it all the way through Bond anyway. Could there be this Bond? That Bond? So anything that is going to inflame that conversation?
No — life’s too short.” Craig says it used to take him half a year to recover from each time he played James Bond. The British actor, who played the British spy in five films concluding with No Time to Die in 2021, told The Times: “Early on with Bond I thought I had to do other work, but I didn’t.
