Daniel Wroughton Craig was born on March 2, 1968, in Chester, Cheshire, England, the son of Timothy John Whitfield Craig, a landlord, and Carol Olivia Williams Craig, an art teacher. His parents divorced when he was four, and he lived primarily with his mother in Liverpool, where he attended Frodsham Church of England Primary School and Hilbre High School in West Kirby. He joined the National Youth Theatre in London at age 16 and subsequently trained at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, graduating in 1991. His early professional career included theatre work, television appearances in British productions, and increasing film roles — Road to Perdition (2002, as Tom Hanks's antagonist), Layer Cake (2004, in which he played an unnamed British drug dealer with cool, precise competence that many identified as prototype Bond), and Munich (2005, Steven Spielberg's account of the Mossad response to the 1972 Olympics massacre).
Daniel Craig's casting as James Bond in 2005 was one of the most publicly contested casting decisions in cinema history: the announcement was greeted with organized public protests, an online petition signed by tens of thousands of people who objected to his blond hair, his physical build, and his perceived unsuitability for the role. Casino Royale (2006) was his answer. The film stripped the Bond franchise back to its origins — the young agent earning his 00 status — and Craig's portrayal of a Bond who is emotionally raw, physically real rather than elegant, and genuinely vulnerable revolutionized the franchise and generated critical and commercial response that were significant. He appeared in five Bond films (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre, No Time to Die) over 15 years.
Craig's Bond films each explored different aspects of a more emotionally complete character than previous franchise iterations: the grief of Casino Royale; the rage of Quantum of Solace; the relationship with M as mother figure in Skyfall (perhaps the finest Bond film in 40 years); the return of SPECTRE in Spectre; and the explicit sacrifice and death in No Time to Die, which gave the character an ending that previous Bond films, with their rotating lead actors, could not provide. Skyfall (2012) grossed $1.1 billion worldwide and is the highest-grossing film in the franchise's history. Craig's physical preparation for the role — he became one of the most visibly muscular Bonds, training for years for each film — became a cultural talking point.
Outside the Bond franchise, Craig appeared in Knives Out (2019, directed by Rian Johnson, as the eccentric private detective Benoit Blanc) and its sequel Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022), demonstrating a comedic range and the ability to create a genuinely original character that had nothing in common with Bond. He married actress Rachel Weisz in June 2011, after they had met during the filming of Dream House (2011); they have a daughter together, born in September 2018. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2021. No Time to Die premiered in September 2021, its release having been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emotional response to Craig's final Bond was unlike any predecessor's departure from the role.
