Daniel Craig

Daniel Craig

Active - 1991 - 2022  |   Born - Mar 2, 1968 in Chester, England  |   Genres - Drama, Thriller, Science Fiction

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Biography by AllMovie

British actor Daniel Craig grew up in Liverpool before moving to London and studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He made his film debut in The Power of One, directed by John G. Avildsen. A few made-for-TV movies followed before his role of Master Kane in the Disney adventure A Kid in King Arthur's Court. Returning to the U.K., he starred in the miniseries Our Friends in the North, the four-part series Moll Flanders, and the TV mystery The Ice House. In 1997 he worked with German director Peter Sehr on Obsession where he met his future girlfriend, German actress/VJ Heike Makatsch. His first leading role in the U.K. came in 1998 with his portrayal of George Dyer, the intimate friend of painter Francis Bacon (played by Derek Jacobi) in John Maybury's Love Is the Devil. Other leading roles followed in the U.K. films Love & Rage, The Trench, Some Voices, and Hotel Splendide. In Hollywood, he had smaller roles in I Dreamed of Africa, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Road to Perdition. In 2002, he played the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in the BBC historical drama Copenhagen. His first mainstream leading role came in 2003 as Ted Hughes, the partner of Sylvia Plath (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) in Christine Jeffs' Sylvia. In 2004, he can be seen in the U.K. films Layer Cake and Enduring Love.

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Factsheet

  • Joined the National Youth Theater in London when he was 16.
  • Portrayed conservative Mormon Joe Pitt in the 1993 original London production of Angels in America at the Royal National Theatre.
  • Won Best Actor at the 2000 British Independent Film Awards for his portrayal of a schizophrenic in Some Voices.
  • Is the sixth actor to play a non-comic James Bond (starting with 2006's Casino Royale), winning over early naysayers who thought he was too short and blond to convincingly play the famous spy.
  • Rehearsed in frigid temperatures for three months and learned to speak Russian for 2008's Defiance, based on the true story of three brothers hiding more than 1,000 Jews in a forest to avoid Nazi capture.