Few stars have shown their versatility quite like Daniel Craig has. While he could've been known only as James Bond for the rest of his life after Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time To Die, he managed to do the impossible and embody another character just as iconic with the Gentleman Sleuth Benoit Blanc in Knives Out and Glass Onion.
People primarily love Craig for either his role as Bond or Blanc. What they may not know is that he's had over a decade of before he ever first put on his iconic 007 suit. Here are awesome roles Daniel Craig has done that aren't James Bond or Benoit Blanc.
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XXXX From Layer Cake
Daniel Craig would NEVER have gotten his role as James Bond if it weren't for his stylish leading role in Matthew Vaughn's crime thriller Layer Cake. It's a stylish, clever movie that keeps audiences guessing from beginning to end. This is the perfect film to see how Matthew Vaughn went from working on Guy Ritchie movies to movies that are all his own style.
The real reason to watch this movie is to see the real beginning of Daniel Craig's version of Bond. Casino Royale may have been his first legitimate Bond film, but this was the movie where he refined the leading man intensity that he would need to play 007 for so long. His character with the redacted name may not be his most iconic role, but there's no way he would be the star he is today without it.
18 Mikael Blomkvist From The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
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Daniel Craig famously had a love/hate relationship with James Bond. While he initially loved working on the 007 films, eventually he grew tired of the character and had to be tempted back with loads of money. In many ways, he was looking for his Benoit Blanc for years before landing Knives Out. One of his biggest attempts at landing a non-Bond franchise was with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. He technically played the lead, Mikael Blomkvist, the reporter who continually finds himself involved in terrifying mysteries that also involve the titular Lisbeth Salander, this time played by Rooney Mara instead of Noomi Rapace or Claire Foy.Everyone expected David Fincher's take on the famous series to be universally adored and to spawn several sequels. While it was a critical darling, audiences were understandably a little off-put by the movie's extreme graphic content. The movie didn't manage to become the hit people thought it would, and it was back to the drawing board for Craig's non-Bond ambitions.
16 Joe Bang From Logan Lucky
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Daniel Craig worked hard to prove he could be James Bond and then ironically he had to prove that he could be anything else aside from James Bond. Enter Steven Soderbergh's Logan Lucky, the movie where he reinvented himself so hard that the movie advertised that it was introducing Daniel Craig for the first time. His performance as the delightful southern criminal, Joe Bang, was a revelation. No one knew that Craig had that kind of energy inside of him. He was not only a leading man but a wild character actor at the same time. In a movie that also featured Adam Driver, Channing Tatum, and Katie Holmes, Craig stole each and every scene that featured him. It may not be his best movie, but it is absolutely one of his most entertaining performances.
If Layer Cake was the movie that paved the way for Craig to play Bond, Logan Lucky was the movie that paved the way for Blanc. At the very least it paved the way for Blanc's southern accent.
14 Tuvia Bielski From Defiance
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One of Craig's most slept on films is the 2008 World War II film, Defiance. In this movie, he plays a guerilla fighter who takes on German soldiers in the woods he used to play in as a kid. Craig doubles down on his action hero persona while also reaffirming that he has what it takes to be considered a serious actor in the film's more dramatic scenes. While the direction of this film was somewhat uninspired, Craig's performance really lifts the film up.
Anyone who likes how intense Craig's Bond is will love seeing his Tuvia Bielski sprinting through the woods as he avoids incoming fire. There are no classy suits in this film, but he is absolutely as cold of an action star as Bond ever was. Just don't expect a Defiance 2 at all.
12 Jake Lonergan From Cowboys & Aliens
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The world may owe Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Jon Favreau an apology for the treatment of Cowboys & Aliens. For some reason it was advertised as a straight-forward action film despite its campy title and premise. The movie features a ton of fun action sequences and an awesome performance from Daniel Craig doing his best Clint Eastwood as the amnesiac Jake Lonergan with the mysterious alien weapon strapped to his wrist. This is a one-of-a-kind scifi western that could've made for an interesting franchise. Instead, it was definitely a black mark on Craig's career and probably ensured it was all but impossible for him to leave the Bond franchise when he wanted to.
At least Jon Favreau learned enough about scifi westerns to make The Mandalorian what it is today. Though that doesn't do Craig any favors...
10 Alex West From Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
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One of the first big blockbuster roles Daniel Craig ever had was when he played Alex West opposite Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. While he was definitely a second string player behind Jolie, he still showed that there was some star power that Hollywood needed to cultivate. What's funny about this role is that, as the love interest, this is as close as he ever could come to basically playing the male equivalent of a Bond girl.
What's also accidentally hilarious about this movie is that the British Daniel Craig plays an American while the American Angelina Jolie plays the British Lara Croft.
8 Steve From Munich
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Daniel Craig really doesn't do many Oscar-worthy dark dramas anymore. He seems to be much more interested in cultivating his more comedic side nowadays. So it's a little refreshing to go back in time to his Munich days when he would play a supporting role in a film about revenge and hate that didn't end with him giving a quippy one-liner at the end. It would be nice to see Steven Spielberg team up with Daniel Craig in another film where he's in more of a leading role. It seems strange that this was the only movie they did together aside from The Adventures of Tintin.
This is also trippy because it was a time when Eric Bana was considered to be the bigger name than Daniel Craig. Oh, how the times do change.
6 Connor Rooney From Road to Perdition
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Every once in a while, Hollywood just decides to do a movie where they drop as many legends as humanly possible acting against each other. Road to Perdition is one of the most slept on examples of this trend. It has Daniel Craig acting in the same film as Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, Stanley Tucci, Jude Law, Ciarán Hinds, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. While today, Craig would be cast as a tough mob enforcer like Tom Hanks, in this film he's actually something of the mob's biggest loser. He's Paul Newman's whiny, pathetic son. It's a performance about as far from his suave James Bond days as possible.
Perhaps the biggest influence this movie had on Craig's career was that it established a close working relationship with him and director Sam Mendes. This would payoff for Skyfall but a little less for Spectre.
4 Lord Asriel From The Golden Compass
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There's no getting around it, 2007's The Golden Compass was a terrible terrible movie. It struggled with adapting Philip Pullman's His Darkest Materials series. One thing it did succeed with was the casting. Daniel Craig was especially perfect as the dynamic, powerful Lord Asriel. The biggest tragedy from this franchise dying on the vine was that we never got to see Craig reprise this role two more times. If nothing else, it's just another film where Craig shows that he knows how to wear a suit better than anyone else in Hollywood.
Now we just have to wonder if he would've been as good as James McAvoy was when he played Lord Asriel for HBO's adaptation of the series. Both actors gave the role all they had.
2 Stormtrooper From Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
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Most people don't know that Daniel Craig is a part of another giant franchise, the Star Wars franchise. While he's definitely an actor who could've pulled a starring role in the series, he actually had a blink-and-you-miss-it role. He was actually the Stormtrooper who Rey used a Jedi Mind Trick on to escape from her confinement in Starkiller Base in The Force Awakens. If you listen closely to the scene, you can tell that it's his voice under that mask. The cameo came about by sheer happenstance, and it truly shows how much fun Craig still has making movies, even if his face isn't shown.
It's just a real shame that Knives Out director Rian Johnson didn't bring his Stormtrooper character back for The Last Jedi. Who knows, maybe Disney+ will give Daniel Craig's random First Order Stormtrooper his own series where he just continues to ruin things for the evil organization on accident.