C OVER STORY
Playing James Bond is a lot about how you look –
the clothes, the walk, the fitness. Do you ever get
fed up with all that?
‘It’s a drag. The best acting is when you’re not concerned about the surface. And Bond is the opposite of
that. You have to be bothered about how you’re looking.
It’s a struggle. I know that how Bond wears a suit and
walks into a room is important. But as an actor I don’t
want to give a fuck about what I look like! So I have
to play with both things. In a way that works, as that’s
Bond: he looks good and he doesn’t give a fuck what
you think he looks like!’
The most famous image of you as Bond is you in
your blue trunks coming out of the sea in ‘Casino
Royale’. How do you feel when you look at that now
ten years on?
‘I don’t look at it! I don’t look at it, weeping, going “Wasn’t
I beautiful!” Everything like that has been a voyage of
discovery. I was aware of what was needed to be Bond
but it still goes against everything I believe in. You’ve met
me a couple of times, I’m not very cool. I’m not the coolest human being. I wish I was, but I’m not. And I don’t
pretend to be cool. But playing James Bond, you have
to be cool, and what the hell is cool? You could write a
dissertation on it! That was a big accident, that particular
shot. I was pretending to swim in shallow water and then
I stood up and walked out of the water! I was pretending
to be cool by swimming, I thought it looked stupid and
stood up and I walked off – and that was the shot!’
Can we expect any similar moments in ‘Spectre’?
‘Am I getting my kit off in this movie? Yes, I’ve been working out for six months. Of course I’m getting my kit off!’
Do you ever look back and think: How the hell did I
end up playing James Bond?
‘I know, it’s ludicrous, it’s ridiculous. When I first got approached, I just thought: You’ve made a mistake. I don’t
know, it’s still crazy.’
What does playing Bond not allow you to do as an
actor?
‘Every idea I’ve had for a Bond movie, I’ve stuck into this
one. It’s gone in. The Bond bank is dry. If you’re asking
me what would I do with another Bond movie? I haven’t
a clue. Go into space? Let’s do it! They already did it.
Let’s do it again.’
No, my question is what does Bond not allow you to
do generally as an actor, beyond Bond?
‘Oh I see, Bond allows me to do anything I want to in
some respects. But it’s changed my working life in an
incredible way. There are more opportunities. I could do
many, many things. But it takes an awful amount of time.
If anything, the restriction is that it is incredibly time-consuming. That’s the restriction.’
There’s always so much expectation and talk around
a new Bond film. Have you got used to the passionate fans and how much they care?
‘You can’t think about it. I don’t go on the Internet any
more. I think if you’re famous, the Internet is evil. I really think that. If you’re famous, it makes you paranoid.
Or it makes you more paranoid than you already are.
Because if you’re famous and you go on the Internet for
half an hour, you realise people are talking about you.
It doesn’t matter how strong you are, some of that will
make you paranoid. I just don’t do it anymore. It’s the
enemy of creativity.’
Bond has a ‘special’ relationship with women. Is he
a dinosaur?
‘Well I think you have to walk a thin line. I think it’s okay
for him – not to be misogynistic, that’s too strong a word
– to find women a little difficult, shall we say? That’s a
character thing. If you start judging him completely on
that, I think you’re lost. And that comes with casting.
What you do is, you do your best to make the parts for
the women in the movie as strong and as interesting
as possible. Otherwise, I’m like: forget it. Because that
world, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t exist any more.
Characters like that exist. People do think like that, so
there’s the conflict. Put that in a movie. Bond still wants
to have sex. I still think he wants to fuck anything with a
pulse. It’s about how the women change hi K