Daniel Craig was hardly dwelling in obscurity when he was first announced as the new James Bond in October 2005, having made his screen debut thirteen years previously, but he was very much an unknown quantity outside of the United Kingdom; although the same could also be said for the majority of his predecessors.
The actor was familiar with the ins and outs of Hollywood having co-starred with Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and lent support in Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed Munich, but his biggest leading role at that stage in his career came in Matthew Vaughn’s crime thriller Layer Cake, which went a long way to landing him 007 in the first place.
To become the leading man of an iconic franchise known the world over is a level of instant fame that nobody can prepare you for. Luckily, the industry’s most wholesome man Hugh Jackman stepped in to offer his support, as revealed by Craig in AppleTV+ documentary Being James Bond.
“My personal life was affected by being that famous all of a sudden. I used to lock myself in and close the curtains, I was in cloud cuckoo land. I was physically and mentally under siege, Hugh Jackman helped me to come to terms with it and appreciate it.”
Not only is that exactly the type of behavior we’ve come to expect from the gentlemanly Jackman, who ironically turned down James Bond when it was offered to him long before Craig was cast, but he knows a thing or two about shooting into the stratosphere almost overnight having joined the cast of X-Men as Wolverine two weeks after shooting even started.
