Journalists insisted he lacked the charisma and physique needed to play Ian Fleming’s playboy secret agent, one of cinema’s biggest and suavest roles, which had been inhabited by the likes of Roger Moore, Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan. “He doesn’t exactly look the part,” sniffed one UK broadcaster, “but he might grow into the job.”

On websites craignotbond.com and blondNotBond.com, abusive commenters ridiculed Craig’s ears, hair colour and “potato face”, claiming he was too blond and too short to portray the cocktail-swilling, villain-slaying spy. Then aged 37, he was widely seen as a talented supporting actor whose screen credits included the feature film, Munich, and the BBC drama, Our Friends in the North, rather than as a natural lead for one of Hollywood’s most lucrative series.

Fast forward 16 years, and as he launches his fifth and final Bond film, No Time To Die – it opens in Australia on Thursday – Craig has become the franchise’s longest-reigning and most psychologically complex secret agent. His Bond not only earned his licence to kill; he also laid bare the suppurating emotional wounds accrued from a life that – for all its cosmopolitan glamour – is lived in the shadows and often drenched in blood and sorrow.

Craig’s two most acclaimed Bond films, Casino Royale (2006) and Skyfall (2012), set box office records for the franchise, with the latter movie raking in $US1.1bn worldwide. In fact, of the 25 official Bond films, Craig’s four instalments – he also starred in 2008’s Quantum of Solace and 2015’s Spectre – have recorded the biggest global box office returns (not adjusting for inflation).

Through Craig’s alchemy of hyper-masculinity and flinty vulnerability, many critics have come to recognise him as the definitive Bond. As Peter Travers from America’s ABC News put it in his review of No Time to Die: “Daniel Craig’s fifth and final go-round as 007 cements his reputation as the gold-standard James Bond of the 21st century and lays down a challenge for anyone who dares to follow him.”

In a Zoom interview, I ask the superstar what he would say now to the naysayers. “Nothing to say to anybody about that,” he replies, avoiding the temptation to appear triumphalist. “There’s nothing I could do about it at the time. I made my own peace with it way back then.

“I understood a lot of it. I understood the kind of passion involved. I knew there was going to be pushback.” Chuckling ruefully, he adds: “I didn’t know it was going to be quite as aggressive as it was. There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t control it. I’m not getting into 101 Psychology, but you can control the things you can control and that’s it. What I could control is that I could go to work and I could do my best.”

He admits in the recently released documentary about his 15-year tenure as 007, Being James Bond, that his ascension to the role “was a harder sell” because “I’d done weird, arty movies”. Barbara Broccoli, from Eon Productions, the family company behind the Bond films, is more upfront about the critical “onslaught” that followed Craig’s casting. “It was just horrible,’’ she says.

— Daniel Craig

Broccoli tells Review that “Daniel has reinvented Bond for the 21st century. He has brought a lot of humanity to the character and through Daniel, we sort of get a look into Bond’s inner life and the conflicts, the emotional conflicts; we’ve been able to explore all of that within his ­series of Bond films.”

Craig’s place in the cinematic firmament is so secure, there are high hopes No Time To Die will be the film that brings Covid-devastated movie theatres back to life. The much-delayed, $US250m movie was the first blockbuster postponed when the Covid-19 pandemic started shuttering cinemas in March 2020. Have the hopes pinned on his final blockbuster added to the pressures of delivering it? Craig replies: “This movie is meant to be seen in the cinema. We’re incredibly grateful that we actually got to this point and there’s a real chance that we will get to be seen in the cinema by everybody. We have to keep things in a little bit of perspective – Covid has meant all of our lives have changed in various ways.

“I hope we can do something to keep cinema. It’s my job. I love it. I’m passionate about it. I make movies to be seen collectively by people in dark rooms … So if we can help, it would be amazing. (But) it’s a tricky time.’’

Broccoli shares this Zoom interview with her leading man. The pair are socially distanced, sitting about 2m apart on straight-backed chairs, but their rapport is obvious. The veteran Bond producer who had to contend with a change of director, Craig injuring his ankle and several pandemic-related delays before finally releasing No Time To Die, often erupts in laughter as she anticipates his jokes.

Craig, a straight talker, is far more irreverent than most big stars tasked with promoting one of the era’s high-stakes films. I ask, jokingly, if he can elaborate on the pithy advice – “Don’t be shit” – that he recently said he would offer the next James Bond. He laughs and replies with his own gag: “I stand by that wholeheartedly, I stand by those comments.’’ Then he adds: “Listen, I asked Pierce [the previous Bond, for advice]. He was very lovely to me when I got the part, and he said, ‘You’ve gotta enjoy the ride’. I just thought, ‘I’ve got to work as hard as I’ve ever worked and I’ve got to try and do the best I can, and that’s all you can really do. I hope that I’ve left it in a good place, so that whoever does it next can springboard off that and take it further.”

He and Broccoli are sitting in front of a painted screen featuring a broad blue sky and coconut palms, suggestive of the tranquil Jamaican location where No Time To Die is partly set. There, in the spiritual home of Bond creator Fleming, we find the retired MI6 agent spending time (unusually for him) with one woman – Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), a psychotherapist and daughter of an assassin, who featured in 2015’s Spectre. This is the first time in the franchise’s six-decade history that a so-called “Bond girl” has returned for a second film.

Of course, their idyll doesn’t last. As Bond and Swann wrestle with trust issues, he is drawn back into a globe-spanning mission involving the CIA and a potential weapon of mass destruction. The bioweapon has been developed at an “off-the-books” UK laboratory, and when it is stolen, M (Ralph Fiennes) turns to the MI6 veteran to sort things out.

Across eye-popping backdrops in Norway, the Faroe Islands, Italy, England and Jamaica, Bond faces down a rogue Russian scientist, long-time nemesis Blofeld and a new villain in Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek), who has an island lair, an odd skin condition and a burning desire to avenge the slaughter of his family – at any cost.

Although Bond’s longest relationship has been with MI6, No Time To Die deepens and complicates his relationship with Swann. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga (Jane Eyre, Sin Nombre, True Detective), the first American to direct a Bond film, tells Review he wanted to “get deeper into what makes the heart beat, and what drives it and what makes it vulnerable”.

Fukunaga, who stepped up to helm the blockbuster after the production parted ways with director Danny Boyle over “creative differences”, agrees that Craig has been the most emotionally complicated Bond. “Casino Royale really brought me back into the franchise as a fan and viewer,” he says. “And I think a large part is based on Daniel’s approach to the role, the complexity he brought to the character, the vulnerability, along with the brute force, that potential for violence, just always on a knife’s edge. It was a really fascinating performance … In this run of films, the philosophy of having the movies interconnect more intricately in terms of plot and character also made them, as a whole, far more engrossing.”

Over four films we’ve seen Craig’s Bond become haunted by a lover, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), who apparently betrayed him – this theme is interrogated further in No Time To Die. In a scene that made grown men wince, Craig had his nether regions whipped while he was bound, naked, to a chair. He has thrown back vodka martinis (we all know the recipe), rocked his tuxedos, jumped off cranes, been shot while fighting atop a moving train and held Judi Dench’s M as she died in his arms.

Craig reveals he deliberately set out to invest the superspy with a psychological complexity at the behest of the franchise’s producers: “Barbara and (co-producer) Michael (Wilson), her brother, they wanted me to do that. I don’t really know how else to act, to tell you the truth,” he says, chortling along with Broccoli. “He’s complex and he kills people for a living but he’s also a lover of people … I went back to the Fleming novels and I read those and I found it very interesting. They’re old-fashioned stories but Fleming had a very conflicted relationship with him and I like that. I like the fact that Fleming didn’t really like the character sometimes, and it shows in the books.” The actor, a graduate of London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, says: “I never judge the characters I play; you can never do that; you have to find something about them that you like and love. But I liked his conflicts – that’s what really interested me.”

In the film’s production notes, he explains: “I wanted Bond to look like a killer and I wanted him to behave like a killer because that’s what he is, an assassin; that’s what he was written as. But I wanted a modern take on that.”

— Barbara Broccoli, film producer

More than any other actor who has portrayed Bond, Craig put his body on the line by doing many of his stunts himself. In the Bond documentary, he jokes about how he was eating a bacon sandwich and smoking a “rollie” when he first met the personal trainer who prepared him for the films. After that, he trained with the dedication of an Olympic athlete, producer Wilson says. Indeed, that beefcake Casino Royale shot of him emerging from the surf in tight swimming trunks, as muscled and tanned as a professional body builder, turned the performer, who is married to the Academy Award-winning actor Rachel Weisz, into an instant sex symbol.

Still, there were drawbacks to his all-in approach with stunts. He broke his leg while filming Spectre and injured his ankle, requiring surgery, while making No Time To Die. There is a scene in the Bond documentary where he lets out a high-pitched yelp after filming a scene for Spectre on his fractured leg. The crew members laugh, only realising in retrospect that their star was in agony.

Fukunaga reveals that while filming No Time To Die, “Daniel hurt his ankle on something as seemingly harmless as a ramp that just didn’t have the right amount of traction for his shoes. Even though there was grip tape put down and precautions made, things happen.”

Before I can finish my question about whether doing his own stunts has been worth it, Craig, now 53, picks up on Broccoli’s sudden hoot of laughter and jokes, “More fool me!” He adds emphatically: “Yes, it was worth it. It was definitely worth it. I wanted to be involved. I had a kind of feeling when I watched the movies, I wanted people when they watched the films to believe it was me, because if they felt like my character was in jeopardy, and they were like, ‘Oh God it’s him,’ then they would enjoy the movies more.

“I loved the physical side of it. Yes, I’ve been injured. Yes, things have been tough sometimes – rehab-ing is not nice as anyone will tell you – but it came with the territory and I don’t regret it at all.”

This assessment is far more upbeat than the one he made after he finished filming Spectre. Then, he told a journalist from Time Out magazine he’d rather “slash my wrists” than do another Bond film. He later admitted he gave the interview just two days after he finished shooting Spectre and “instead of saying something with style and grace, I gave a really stupid answer”.

Asked about the best and worst aspects of playing Bond, he says: “I don’t think there’s a downside. In the documentary I talk about press intrusion but you know, they don’t seem that interested in me anymore so, that’s showbiz! … Will I miss it (media interest)?” he asks in a sardonic tone that means he won’t.

Here, he is referring to how he became a recluse after his second Bond film, Quantum of Solace, was released in 2008. In a short time, notes Broccoli, Craig – the son of a pub owner and an art teacher – had gone from being a non-household name to being “on the tea towels”.

“I didn’t go out … I didn’t know how to handle it. I don’t still,” he says in the documentary. However, he also explains in that film that Australia’s Hugh Jackman, with whom he appeared in a 2009 New York production of the play, Steady Rain, taught him how to be at ease with fans, fame and media intrusion. “It became fine,” he says.

No Time To Die marks the end of an era for Craig and he says he is grappling with conflicting emotions including sadness and a sense of relief. “It’s been such a huge part of my life for a large chunk of my life,” he says of being Bond, “and it’s been an incredibly rewarding and creative time and I shall miss it. Definitely I shall miss it, but also I feel like it feels right. It feels like what we’ve done with this film – which is connected very closely with all the other films we’ve made – it feels like a way to cap things off; we’ve tied up a lot of loose ends with this story.

“I’m incredibly proud of it. I’m incredibly proud of all the movies we’ve done because of the huge collective effort that goes into making them, and this one especially has been a joy to do because of the energy and the talent that was around me while we were making it.” (In his next screen incarnation, he reprises his role as a gentleman Louisiana detective, swapping his tuxes for tweed jackets and tortoiseshell specs in the yet-to-be-named sequel to the critically lauded whodunit, Knives Out.)

No Time To Die opened in the UK and US in recent weeks. Amid the ongoing pandemic, global box office returns topped $US600m by the end of October, making it one of Hollywood’s most lucrative releases of the year. Craig’s swan song has garnered five-star raves from The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Times, with Times critic Kevin Maher declaring: “It’s magnificent.” Across the pond, American critics have praised Craig’s “scorched earth” performance, but some have taken issue with its convoluted plot and 2 hour 43 minute-running time – it’s the longest Bond film to date.

Fukunaga’s film mixes familiar tropes with the unexpected – there is a tricked-up Aston Martin DB5, megalomaniacal villains with hordes of henchmen, explosions galore and an astonishing motorcycle stunt that gives the finger to gravity. There are supporting female characters who are just as likely to kick arse as show off their curves: dressed in a low-cut evening gown, CIA agent Paloma (Ana de Armas) takes out several thugs with her personal arsenal and martial arts moves before calmly retiring to the bar for a round of vodka martinis with Bond.

But it’s the secret agent’s relationship with Swann that forms the film’s sombre emotional core, from the opening flashbacks to the surprise ending. Fukunaga, who co-wrote the film with Bond old hands Neil Purvis and Robert Wade and Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge, says he wanted Swann to be more accessible to audiences: “If we’re gonna explore Madeleine deeper as a potential love interest for Bond, I want to know who she is … because the more we understand her, the more we empathise with her, the more we’re on Bond’s side in terms of whether it’s another betrayal or it’s someone that’s gonna take him to the next stage in life.”

Seydoux, who stars as a stern jail warden and muse in the forthcoming Wes Anderson film, The French Dispatch, reveals that Swann “had a very complicated childhood and that’s why she understands Bond in a way that maybe others don’t, because she knows what it feels like to be an orphan”.

“What’s nice is that this time, in No Time To Die, we have more access to who she is, because she’s obviously in love with James Bond and she shows her vulnerability and her fragility in that sense. It’s very new because all the Bond girls were (previously) a bit like … tools, they were objectified, sexualised, but this time she’s like a real woman, you can relate to her.”

Asked whether the next Bond should be a woman or person of colour, the Palm d’Or winning actor says: “Maybe not a woman because James Bond is a man.” Her view on this mirrors those of Craig and Broccoli, and she reflects: “I think the new James Bond should be different from Daniel, that’s for sure. Daniel really created his own character and I hope the next actor will do the same.”

Broccoli agrees that Craig, who came under such ferocious attack a decade and a half ago, has made the role his own. “He has not only made his mark on the Bond franchise,” she says. “He has now made his mark on cinematic history.”

No Time To Die opens nationally on November 11. Stephen Romei will review the film in The Australian on November 13.